David Crotty already said that there are too many redundant services on Science 2.0… Indeed, look at this page where an article can be collected in different online services:

from left to right: CiteULike, Complore, Connotea, Del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, Reddit, Technorati, Twitter

Every things nice with a little sugar and spice. Isn’t it? Ohhh yes, it is. Cowgirl Chocolates can prove it.

When the package arrived from Cowgirl Chocolates, and I opened the box and saw the gorgeous red box inside, I didn’t want to open it! It was so pretty, wrapped in ribbon, adorned with the sweet little star on top. Being the country girl I am, I was in love. Marilyn, the head cowgirl over there, has great taste!

This is chocolate with a kick. Whatever your chocolate need be. Ladies, we all have a need for chocolate at one time or another. How many occasions can you think of? Cowgirl Chocolates creates a “just because” chocolate occasion, sporting the spiced up flavors that’s sure to make your toes curl!

After I finally opened my pretty little red box, my husband walked by and nabbed a piece of candy. He just happened to pick up Buckin’ Hot Habanero Caramel, HA! He ran with it. Straight to the sink for water. That’ll surely teach him to nab my goodies again. Now the mix of chocolate and spices are good, really good! But not all will set you on a running trip to the waterin’ hole. My daughter and I got to taste some of the Cowgirl Chocolates that didn’t have a kick. One of our favorites were Raspberry lemonade dark chocolate, an old cowgirl recipe blended to perfection with raspberry, lemon and deep dark chocolate. And on my “to get” list is Sarsaparilla Milk Chocolate, milk chocolate swirled with sarsaparilla (root beer) from the good ol’ days.

Why don’t you wander on over to the Flavor Guide, and see what you can find that you’ll like. With or without a kick.

I love the keepsake packaging they have.

Head Cowgirl Marilyn Lysohir founded Cowgirl Chocolates in 1997.

Her two favorite things in the world are art (she has a notable career as a ceramic sculptor) and chocolate. In fact her first job was working in a chocolate factory in
Pennsylvania. Marilyn mingled some favorite memories
with some new ideas to create an American original,
Cowgirl Chocolates.

Cowgirl Chocolates has won a total of 16 product awards
and 2 packaging awards and is located in Moscow, Idaho
USA.  It has also been featured on the Food Network
on “Unwrapped” and “Extreme Cuisine” and in the New
York Times and Toronto Star among others.

Cowgirl Chocolates is kindly offering one of our readers a 1/3 pound sampler package of their chocolates! Don’t want to wait to see if you win? Then you can purchase the same sampler for $12.95.

WIN IT

MANDATORY Entry – Visit Cowgirl Chocolates, and tell us what flavor(s) you would like to try the most.

Extra Entries: The mandatory entry MUST be completed or no extra entries will count. They can, and will be deleted, 1 entry unless specified otherwise below. You MUST leave a separate comment for each entry, otherwise it will count as one entry.

EXTRA Optional Entries

~ Sign up for Cowgirl Chocolates email updates, and specials. (very bottom of the site.)

~  Subscribe to our rss Feed (1 entry)

~  Subscribe AND confirm to our Email (2 entries)

~  Follow Networking Witches , WinterWitch and/or RedNeckWitch on Twitter (1 entry for each followed) And please send the below tweet.

~  Twitter this giveaway feel free to copy and paste this:  (You can tweet daily But you MUST leave the link to your tweet) NetWorkingWitches.com is giving away Cowgirl Chocolates http://wp.me/ppVmm-Nm Chocolate with a kick! Ends 12/05 Great for #snowdays

~  Grab our button and post the link where we can find it. Copy and paste the code from the right hand side.  (2 entries)

~  Fave us on Technorati and let us know your user name. (2 entries)

~  Add our text link to your blogroll and leave us a link to it. http://www.networkingwitches.com

~ Blog about this giveaway linking to Networking Witches and the sponsor. Come back and leave us the direct link.  (3 entries)

~ Stumble this post, not the site.

~ Digg this post, and leave a link to the Digg, and your username.

This giveaway will end on 12/0509 at 11:59 PM CST.

I was sent Cowgirl Chocolate samples for review, I was not paid any monetary compensation for this review. This post is my opinion and should be taken as just that. Having received samples has no impact on my personal use, experience, or like for any product.

Please read skills page update

In the previous 3 pieces, I defined and analyzed the problem in the previous 3 pieces, and suggested improvements – most of which have already succeeded in solving similar problems in other cities. The only thing unique is that Cleveland has allowed itself to fall so low. My commenter lsbnbj blames a lack of leadership for the problems. This is true. By definition, strong, wise, caring leadership would not have allowed this decline to occur.

That said, it doesn’t take brilliant leadership to follow in the path of regeneration that other cities have already established. Mostly it takes persistence, concentration and cooperation. This is something that even bureaucrats could accomplish, if they were empowered to do so. What does take leadership is in persuading people, at the beginning, to support a new system that would be much more effective in achieving its goals. This is how I would do it:

Set Goals
In the 3 previous pieces in this series, I set out what I think are necessary goals to achieve in order to revitalize Cleveland and its surrounding region:
1. Think and cooperate regionally
2. Bring in businesses and jobs
3. Bring new people into the region’s urban cores

Leadership and persuasion: how to get things started.
I know many people who think the leadership in and around Cleveland are ineffective, uncooperative, self-interested idiots – often using that or similar language to describe them. Credibility is the foundation upon which effective persuasion is built. Cleveland and the other regional urban cores need to do competently and successfully those things that are within their power to do to help themselves. I suggested things that are simple, cheap and effective: tax credits for renovation, being easy to do business with, and community-police trust building and cooperation. To the extent that these things build up the tax base, they can provide revenue for more baby-steps. An unmistakable pattern of many small successes sustained over time will build credibility. Credibility is requisite to persuasion, which is the vehicle to achieving cooperation.

If Cleveland and the other cities in the region want help, they have to change minds by showing that they are serious about fixing their problems, and will wisely apply any and all resources to effectively uplift their own city, and the region as a whole. Once Cleveland and the other cities within the region show they are serious about growth and revitalization, then they can begin to make the case that ‘if we all work together, we can grow, better, stronger, faster than we would alone’.

Right now, Akron is most ready to lead. Akron may not be the largest city in the region – but for now, it should be the face of the region. Akron convinced me to move into the city – even though I could have afforded a house almost anywhere in the region – even in the most expensive suburbs. Akron should be the leader and role model for the rest of the region until some other city in the region can do better than Akron.

Like I said in my very first piece, ‘to  be effective, the idea of reform must become a vision compelling to all. Like President Obama says we need change we can believe in. Its not enough to have some vague notion of it – a concrete plan must be made and executed. Those with an interest in reform must help set the agenda, or those who favor the current state of affairs will corrupt the agenda, and make the reforms ineffective’.

It will also take a strong, caring leader who is willing to be abused in his official capacity by many people both petty and well-intentioned. Do you know such a leader who wants to revitalize Cleveland and its surrounding communities? Ask him if he will stand for election.

Cleveland could attract decent leadership again.    Former Cleveland mayors George Voinovich (Republican) and Michael White (Democrat) both were able to make substantial headway for 2 decades straight  The North-East Ohio region has no shortage of good business leaders either – the supply of leaders is here.  Now, the region has to make sure the demand is there and make sure that demand is clearly understood by those who would want to lead us to better days.

Working at a regional level should increase the amount of demand (more highly-educated voters in the suburbs who will vote in favor of leaders who will bring success). As a community, our region can do a lot to attract good leaders, by making the leadership jobs satisfying and effective. By satisfying I mean having appropriate power without any unnecessary administrative restrictions – that is no restriction except for meaningful oversight, clear objectives and clear responsibilities that do not compete with or overlap other people’s responsibility and vice-versa. In short, we have to convince potential leaders that there is a prospect of success if they come here. Think about it: no one wants to be fired from running Cleveland – you can get any lower than that. It would also help if we set up the leadership jobs to be competitively (but not extravagantly) paid.

Planning and Execution: how to finish it.
A simple referendum should be held once enough people are persuaded that there is a realistic chance of success. The ballot measure should read:

TITLE 1:   CREATE A NEW LOCAL GOVERNMENT STRUCTURE (NLGS) that merges the counties of North East Ohio and their cities and their suburbs and empowers it with the revenues and powers of the merged jurisdictions for the purpose of accomplishing Titles 2 and 3.

• The counties to be included are Cuyahoga, Summit, Lake, Mahoning, Trumbull, Stark, Wayne, Portage, Geauga, Medina and Lorain.
• The NLGS should include an elected legislative power, and an elected executive power.
• The legislative power should include 1 representative from each county (11 total) and 9 more at-large representatives, all elected by popular vote. The legislature would legislate on those matters that can not be handled administratively. The legislature would have powers of subpoena in matters within their jurisdiction and a staff of whatever experts and clerical workers they may need.
• The NLGS will measure their own progress using these measures of success: Measure #1-a: The net number of full-time jobs created within the area of the NLGS that pay at least $15/hour. Measure #1-b: the net number of full-time jobs created within the area of the NLGS that pay at least $25/hour. Measure #2: the % population growth each year within the area of the NLGS. Measure #3: cost per resident to run the NLGS (the budget should be balanced within any 4 year period, although not necessarily in individual years). Measure #4: the net square footage of newly renovated buildings in current use.  These results will be verified annually by an independent auditor.

TITLE 2:   CREATE A BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY with broad administrative powers to bring in businesses and jobs, by being an easy place in which to do business, building on existing strengths and turning weaknesses into strengths, etc. This Authority will be required to improve all gains 2 years out of any 3 year period. This would report to the executive. The legislature will establish a committee to oversee this Authority generally.

TITLE 3:  CREATE A RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY with broad administrative powers to bring people into this region, especially the cities, by making the cities nice places to live in both actuality and perception. This Authority will be required to improve all gains 2 years out of any 3 year period. This would report to the executive. The legislature will establish a committee to oversee this Authority generally.

TITLE 4:   ALL EXISTING LOCAL BODIES THAT PERFORM THESE SAME RESPONSIBILITIES AS THOSE CREATED IN TITLES 1-3 WILL BE ABOLISHED.

TITLE 5:   THE NLGS WILL BE ELECTED EVERY 4 YEARS, to coincide with the US presidential election. No one may serve more than 3 terms in the NLGS regardless of capacity or capability. No one may stand for election who has been convicted of any kind of corruption, or who has been found to be incompetent in his NLGS role, or who has served in a previous NLGS term that did not meet its numerical objectives. Pay for NLGS executive, legislature and Development Authorities members will be competitive with cities of similar size and challenges, but not extravagant. Pay will be 1/3 base pay, 1/3 current-performance bonus and 1/3 deferred-performance bonus over a 5 year period, where the deferred pay depends on the performance in the year preceding the bonus payment.

TITLE 6:  ESCAPE CLAUSE: in 16 years time, the voters should have the opportunity, to dissolve the new governing structure, by a 2/3 majority vote, and revert to the previous system of governance.

So, what say?  Lets start turning this region around.

In my last post I mentioned a book I recently finished reading by digital marketing expert Mitch Joel titled, “Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone.”

This fantastic book integrates digital marketing, social media, personal branding and entrepreneurship in a very clear and easy to understand way. A great read! Below is a list of 15 main points from the book that stood out to me. It was tough to choose which main points to include in my list so if you’ve read the book and think I missed one feel free to add to the list or submit your own list. I’d love to hear what other people took away from this great book.

15 Key highlights from “Six Pixels of Separation”

1. Trust + Community = ROI
ROI is now driven by how loyal and engaged your consumers are, especially when using online channels.

2. No one is “using” anymore. Everyone is creating.
There is no such thing as a “user” anymore. No one is “using” anything anymore.  They are creating. You are creating. It’s all about creating. Ex.) Facebook: Everyone creates their own experience through the many profile apps Facebook offers. Add your own pictures, create events, build pages, create groups, update your status, send people messages, online chat etc. They’re all centered around the idea of letting people create their own Facebook experience.

3. Embrace the “conversation”
Everyone is talking about starting, joining, or being a “conversation” in order to grow your business. New online media platforms such as blogs and Twitter all embrace the idea of conversation. Before choosing to use online channels you must embrace the conversation.

4. Human nature is about community.
It’s human nature to want to be part of a community. Online channels offer another community for people to participate and connect in. Start your own community and embrace your members.

5. What are people saying about you and your company?
6 free online tools to help you find out:
1. RSS readers (Google reader)
2. News Alerts (Google alerts)
3. Watchlists (Technorati)
4. Google blog search
5. Search Engines
6.  Google trends and Facebook Lexicon

6. Online communities = brand building power
You can’t have a strong business without a strong community so harness the power of online communities to build your business. NOW is the time to harness the power that lies in online communities!

7. Think ripples, not splashes.
Traditional advertising campaigns = big splash in a pool of water.
Splashes do work (when done right) but only for a limited time.
Using less energy you can throw small pebble (your idea) into the pool and let the ripple effect take hold. Ripples = powerful WOM conversations generated when you share your content online. In the digital world it’s a lot easier and less expensive to create a ripple than a splash.

8. “Great brands provoke people”
Don’t worry about controlling your brand. Focus on creating a great brand with a great message that resonates with consumers. Concentrate on connecting to your consumers and creating engaging brand experiences.

9. Make personal branding PERSONAL in a digital world
Online channels are used to connect, share, and grow and are a great way to build your personal brand. They can help you establish yourself and your company as a recognized industry authority. Online channels used towards building a global audience are creating new business models and new marketing campaigns that are targeted and relevant, and deliver tremendous ROI.

10. Quality NOT quantity
Attention does not equal trust. Trust is gained through good content, engaging participation on your part, and how you engage with your community. Be helpful. Be sincere. The long-term game of sustainability in the online channels is one of quality versus quantity.

11. Online credibility is EVERYTHING.
Very few brands are embracing the idea of creating credibility through the use of digital channels. Most look for quick fixes. (i.e. banner ads, 3rd party email lists, add anyone to Facebook, Twitter etc.) Ask your consumers for their thoughts, ideas and comments and then be proactive with their feedback in order to gain credibility.

12. Invest in creating great content
People want to work with a company that is seen and recognized as an industry leader. Investing in online channels can help your business create great content such as text, images, audio and video, which provide consumers with information that adds value to their lives, gives them things to think about and keeps them engaged with your brand much longer than a thirty-second t.v. commercial.

13. Embrace collaboration
Readily available, free and easy to use, online tools allow easy mass collaboration between you and your consumers. See and embrace collaboration with your consumers as a business opportunity, a business development strategy and part of your long-term growth.

14. Mobile marketing = huge business opportunities
In Mitch Joel’s own words, “Cellphones have become the personal remote control for our lives.” Mobile channels offer business opportunities to connect, share and grow with your costumers. Be a leader. Seize the opportunity before others in your industry do.

15. Everyone is connected. Connect your business to everyone.

If you’ve read the book I’d love to see your list of main points or hear your thoughts on the book. Hope to hear from you!

Technorati SOTB 2009 –

No sé si conocéis Technorati, uno de los principales buscadores de blogs. Vendría a ser como “el Google” de los blogs. Cada año, publican un estudio sobre el estado de la blogosfera que aporta datos interesantes sobre por qué bloguea la gente o cuál es el perfil más habitual de blogger. El mes pasado se dio a conocer la última edición de este informe. Podéis consultar los datos más relevantes en la presentación que encabeza este post.

Algunos de los datos más curiosos de la última edición:

• El 72 % de los bloggers escriben en su blog por hobby, para expresar sus propias ideas. El 28 % restante, lo hace con objetivos profesionales, ya sea para la empresa para la que trabaja o para complementar su sueldo.
• 2 de cada 3 bloggers son hombres y llevan más de 2 años blogueando. El 60% tiene entre 18 y 44 años.
• Un 75 % de los bloggers tiene formación universitaria.

Here’s the first of three posts based on the presentation I gave at WordCamp Victoria. You can  view my slides on SlideShare here.

This visual by Mark Smiciklas depicts the challenge we have in making sense of what is going on within the social media space. It points to the need for research strategies that enable us to listen and act on relevant signals in the sea of social media noise.

How to find material that will interest your readers, and organize it so you can access it when you need it:

Read, read, and read. Read posts by other writers who are interested in the same subject as you – whether that be urbanism, productivity, photography  or social media – whatever it is you’re blogging about. Read comments people have submitted. And also seek out different points of view.

You can find other blogs in your subject area through sites such as Alltop, Technorati, Google Blog Search and Loaded Web. (Tip: Some of these sites, such as Alltop and Loaded Web, will list your blog. Not automatic with Alltop, but make them a pitch.)

Subscribe to those blogs you like through a service such as Google Reader. The folks at Google make it super easy to add a subscription, find others you might like, star items, and share items you like with others. Other items such as Google Alerts and Flickr updates can come through your Google Reader account as well, so it’s all in one handy place.

Now that you’re reading your feeds each day, you’ll soon start accumulating some fabulous ideas for future posts. How to store them in a way that’s easy to access later? Set up an account with a social booking site such as Delicious.

Want to dig a bit deeper in the area of research? Check out KD Paine, Charlene Li and Angela Sinickas.  They are all tremendous reseachers and thought leaders.

And for fun, check out CEO Merrill Dubrow’s blog. Dubrow is president and CEO of MARC Research, a 100-person market research firm in Irving, Texas. In addition to standard web metrics, his staff measure the average length of comments (106 words), the total number of comments (1,700 in 18 months), and the number of people who have contributed more than four (115).

http://obama-weather.com/

Follow Joy Huber, Lincoln enterepreneur, and her adventures as a state representative to this week’s National Summit in Chicago, Democracy 2.0: Exploring the Millenial Generation’s ROI in Chicago, a gathering of 150 people ages 18 to 34 aimed at enlisting their brain power to find solutions for the economic challenges their generation faces. The gathering is sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and Mobilize.org. Omaha.com – The Omaha World-Herald: Money – Democracy 2.0: Nov. 16 report

Technorati Tags: Joy Huber, Lincoln, entrepreneur, national summitt, Democracy 2.0, millenial generation, Peter G. Peterson Foundation, mobilize.org, economic climate, economic future, Facebook, Twitter, David Axelrod, movers & shakers, communication skills, millennial entrepreneurs, small business, Chicago, joyhuber.com,

“I feel very good when I get a letter. I feel I am being loved very much. It makes me want to write lots of letters to my sponsor.” — Sesilia, 9, Tanzania

Sesilia expresses what all sponsored friends feel about receiving letters from their sponsors. A letter from you is a symbol of love and represents the human connection in the relationship. Exchanging letters is a way for you build that relationship.

If you haven’t written your friend because you don’t know what to say, grab a piece of paper and a pen. Our goal with this month’s eNews is to help you compose a letter step-by-step using as an example a letter written by a sponsor to her friend in Venezuela.

Step 1: The opening
How do you start? This is usually the toughest part of the letter. Start by greeting your friend and asking about the family. Then, follow up with something your friend mentioned in a previous letter as Sheila has done here. Did he take a test? Is a family member ill? Did she have a birthday? The opening is the place to touch base about important events your friend has talked about.

Step 2: The body
Now that you’ve opened the letter, share what’s going on in your household. Sheila mentions Halloween and the upcoming holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sponsored friends love hearing about holiday customs. Or, share something about yourself. Describe a pet. Talk about your favorite sport. Tell your friend about your children, their ages and grades in school. The words will flow once you start writing about something important to you.

Step 3: The closing
In your closing paragraph, give your friend encouragement. Sheila simply closed her letter by wishing Edinson and his family a happy New Year. Tell your friend you think about him and pray for him and his family. Then, sign off.

Congratulations! The hard part is done. You can include a photo of yourself and your family with your letter. Sponsored friends love getting pictures.

Mailing your letter
Follow the instructions provided with the pre-printed mailing labels you received from CFCA. Send your letter via international airmail, unless it is sent to a U.S. mailing address. Check postage rates at the U.S. Postal Service Web site, www.usps.com.

We have more suggestions about letter writing here.

Was this helpful? Do you have any questions for us regarding letter writing? Drop us a line, we’d love to hear from you.

Chris Nee, the Julie Andrews of the social media space, discusses Murdoch’s bullish attitude towards Google, Obama’s Tweet #fail, crap tattoos, the outing of Belle du Jour and the death rattle of Technorati.

Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation have been grappling with the web for a long old while now, and Murdoch has been very vocal recently in his assertion that free-to-user business models are not viable for news outlets. Paywalls and micropayments are more his kind of thing and, as unpopular as he is, he may have a point.

News Corp has closed ranks on the social web, apparently coming to the conclusion that blocking Google (i.e. preventing its articles from appearing on Google News) will do the outlets little economic damage because most visitors who enter websites through that route quickly depart.

That doesn’t appear to be the case, however. Google sends outlets 100,000 clicks a minute (according to itself) and provides 25% of WSJ.com’s traffic (according to Hitwise).

Google also has problems in Switzerland, where it’s being taken to court by the state over Street View privacy concerns.

In other Murdochy news, MySpace could be set for an interesting development. True to News Corp form, the site looks set to introduce paid services in order to remain/become viable. The payments will likely focus on the site’s music offering (something I previously argued was its biggest asset) in an effort to offset a staggering monthly streaming spend of $20m.

Obama doesn’t tweet

Digi News wouldn’t be Digi News without lots of pointless Twitter fluff. First, alleged UK comedian Rory McGrath addressed its ubiquitousness in shoddy Dave comedy show Argumental last week. Clearly ignoring the fact that it’s 2009 and all possible plays on the word “Twitter” have been done to death, McGrath suggested without irony that it should be called “Twatter” and then grinned smugly as if he was the first to crack that particular joke. Get to the back of the queue, Rory.

Elsewhere, Barack Obama aka The President of the United States of America has not-very-controversially revealed that he has never used Twitter. Given his presidential campaign’s heavy (and well-managed) use of the site I suppose this is worthy of a raised eyebrow, but nothing more.

The Obama Twitter profile has never claimed to be written by the man himself or tweeted anything that implied as much. Most of those who applauded “his” use of Twitter knew it was part of an effective communications campaign, not a window into the soul of the future President.

Arbitrary photo of bad tattoo

One of my personal favourite things about social media is proliferation of photography featuring crap tattoos. Some of the most amusing are the logos of brands, particularly social media sites. But Brian, the owner of the shoulder above, is a Cisco fanboy. What an unusual chap.

Belle de Jour unmasked

Last week I gave a training session which defined Belle de Jour: Diary of a London Call Girl as one of a batch of anonymous blogs about ordinary people living extraordinary lives. Now, the word “anonymous” doesn’t apply.

Dr Brooke Magnanti outed herself as Belle in an interview with The Times‘ India Knight. Her blog caught the public imagination and became a best-selling book and an ITV television series starring Billie Piper. Her steamy tales are now all but confirmed as true, and she really did work for a London escort agency between 2003 and 2004. Now, just like Girl with a One-Track Mind and NightJack, we know who she is. Unlike them, her specialist areas are developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology.

But why now? Magnanti outed herself, claiming that she is tired of anonymity and wanted to get the news out before an aggrieved ex-boyfriend did it for her. But The Media Blog’s Will Sturgeon has a more cynical theory: nobody’s given Belle a second thought for yonks.

Technorati: changes masking death throes?

WeissComm’s Neville Hobson posted on Sunday about something I considered recently, namely the demise of Technorati. The site was once the standard for blog search engines and had a very useful system which provided two vital statistics (difficult to come by in blogging, sometimes): rank and authority. Speaking purely as a blogger, I pay little attention to rank because it makes little difference to me whether I’m ranked 783,235th or 827,214th.

However, authority, previously defined as “the number of unique blogs linking to this blog in the last six months”, gave me an idea of how I was doing in terms of people finding my stuff interesting enough to link to. Technorati is currently undergoing significant infrastructural change which it argues will bring the ailing site back up to scratch.

But is it too late? I’ve given up on Technorati because I don’t trust it and it also no longer acts as a worthwhile service to let me know when I’ve been linked to. They’d have to do a hell of a job to persuade me to come back. And I’m not the only one, as Neville notes.

“Where can I go and what can I do, for the money I want to spend?”

This is an easy question for a traveller to ask, but extremely difficult for a computer to answer. If you’ve ever found the perfect hotel online, with the perfect flight, only to stumble at the perfect dates, you’ll know how frustrating it can be to find what you want.

This is where Extreme Search comes in. It’s a concept that takes innovation, inspiration, interaction, transparency, data quality and speed, and brings them together to serve the needs of people who want to travel. It enables people to query computers through their own criteria, rather than being limited to what is available. It wraps the technology around the traveller.

Affinity Shopper: extreme search in action

So, what does extreme search look like?

The answer to this question is Affinity Shopper. The first product of an Extreme Search suite of solutions.

Watch the demo:

This is a new search engine that transforms airline websites into a ‘traveller playground’. It is where consumers can explore and select their trip based on their desired holiday experience, rather than simply searching for flights along specific routes on exact dates.

Affinity Shopper enables airlines to improve their share of the leisure travel market, increase look to book ratios, boost customer retention and improve the online customer shopping experience.

Meanwhile, it enables customers to shop in the way they think, not in a linear destination-and-date way. They can now ask questions such as: “What can I do for what I want to spend? And where can I go? I want to go scuba diving, but I do not know where. And I want a beach holiday but I do not want the temperature to be above 25C.”

The Amateur-Expert Traveller: A new phenomenon, and the future of travel

At Amadeus we believe that people drive the technology, and this is borne out by our new report, called “The Amateur-Expert Traveller”.

Today, we are seeing a new generation of travellers. They have been empowered by the internet, with more information available to them, in particular user-generated information in the form of blogs, videos, pictures, ratings and reviews, and so on.

So, the relationship between travel companies and their customers is changing. Customers know more, need more, and expect more. We call them Amateur-Experts because they are often highly informed and discerning. And they present a great opportunity for the travel industry to improve to match their requirements.

Based on primary research with 2,719 travel professionals and 30 thought-leaders and senior executives from companies such as Kayak, Forrester and Qatar Airways, the Amateur-Expert Traveller report highlights three significant developments: the rise of the Amateur-Expert Traveller; the potential for massive technological innovation before, during and after a trip, which we term The Responsive Journey; and the way in which the industry is moving towards niche experiences which, again, offer huge potential for travellers and travel companies alike.

Download the Amateur-Expert Traveller Report.

Read about it in the Wall Street Journal: “Amadeus’s New Booking System Targets Leisure Travelers”.

Watch an interview with Amateur-Expert Traveller Steven Domanski:

We think the time is ripe for massive change in the travel industry. We believe there are going to be step changes in the way people use travel information, driven by the interplay between technology and human behaviour. And we say that it’s time for the travel industry to recognise this, and the potential for this, and make it work.

This is why today we’re announcing three major developments. Our concept of ‘Extreme Search’; the Affinity Shopper product which is based on Extreme Search principles; and the Amateur-Expert Traveller Report, which details the rise and rise of Amateur-Expert Travellers, empowered by the information they can find online, and how this is fundamentally changing the travel industry.

Extreme Search: humanising the technology

“Where can I go and what can I do, for the money I want to spend?”

This is an easy question for a traveller to ask, but extremely difficult for a computer to answer. If you’ve ever found the perfect hotel online, with the perfect flight, only to stumble at the perfect dates, you’ll know how frustrating it can be to find what you want.

This is where Extreme Search comes in. It’s a concept that takes innovation, inspiration, interaction, transparency, data quality and speed, and brings them together to serve the needs of people who want to travel. It enables people to query computers through their own criteria, rather than being limited to what is available. It wraps the technology around the traveller.

Affinity Shopper: extreme search in action

So, what does extreme search look like?

The answer to this question is Affinity Shopper.

Watch the below demo and see for yourself:

This is a new search engine that transforms airline websites into a ‘traveller playground’. It is where consumers can explore and select their trip based on their desired holiday experience, rather than simply searching for flights along specific routes on exact dates.

Affinity Shopper enables airlines to improve their share of the leisure travel market, increase look to book ratios, boost customer retention, and improve the online customer shopping experience.

Meanwhile, it enables customers to shop in the way they think, not in a linear destination-and-date way. They can now ask questions such as: “What can I do for what I want to spend? And where can I go? I want to go scuba diving, but I do not know where. And I want a beach holiday but I do not want the temperature to be above 25C.”

The Amateur-Expert Traveller: A new phenomenon, and the future of travel

At Amadeus we believe that people drive the technology, and this is borne out by our new report, called “The Amateur-Expert Traveller”.

Today, we are seeing a new generation of travellers. They have been empowered by the internet, with more information available to them, in particular user-generated information in the form of blogs, videos, pictures, ratings and reviews, and so on.

So, the relationship between travel companies and their customers is changing. Customers know more, need more, and expect more. We call them Amateur-Experts because they are often highly informed and discerning. And they present a great opportunity for the travel industry to improve to match their requirements.

Based on primary research with 2,719 travel professionals and 30 thought-leaders and senior executives from companies such as Kayak, Forrester and Qatar Airways, the Amateur-Expert Traveller report highlights three significant developments: the rise of the Amateur-Expert Traveller; the potential for massive technological innovation before, during and after a trip, which we term The Responsive Journey; and the way in which the industry is moving towards niche experiences which, again, offer huge potential for travellers and travel companies alike.

Download the Amateur-Expert Traveller Report.

All of a sudden, what we’ve been talking about for years in the Leading Edge Forum’s Consumerisation group (going back to study tours years ago) is getting a much higher popular profile.

In the early days, we were making the case against a lot of scepticism that consumer technology (and not just PCs, but online services that we now call Web 2.0) is cheaper, faster and more capable than most enterprise provision; and leaders like BP were changing their security model to enable employees to pick their own kit and still be more secure than the traditional “everything inside the firewall’s ok” mindset.

Stage two was when the major insight services (naming no names …) finally “got it” and decided that they’d invented the term Consumerisation.

Now, it’s into the general business press and the case studies are beginning to show what we’ve been saying for years: that smart college kids won’t want to work in an environment limited by corporate blinkers. OK, the alert is from an article in CIO Insight. But it features an interview with Google’s CIO; and it starts with a link to an article in the WSJ. We’re getting there!

Links:
• Google’s CIO on Technology Choice, Biz-Tech 3.0, 16 Sep 2009
• It’s a Free Country… So why can’t I pick the technology I use in the office? Wall Street Journal online, 15 Nov 2009
• You might find some interesting stuff by using my Gartner Blog search engine and searching for “Consumerization”. Don’t forget to use the American spelling!

Netcraft, an Internet services company based in Bath, England, reported that, as part of its July 2009 Web Server Survey, it received responses from 239,611,111 sites, an increase of around 1.5 million sites from the previous month. I’m sorry, did somebody just say Web sites are proliferating at something like 1,500,000 per month?

A glance at Technorati’s annual State of the Blogosphere report reveals equally staggering numbers of blogs, unique visits, and Facebook members. It gets better. Jim Singer’s article on the IP Spotlight blog, Employee Blogging and Use of Social Media – Managing the Risk, notes:

Social media usage is exploding.  Recent data indicates that Facebook has over 200,000,000 users, while Twitter has over 7,000,000 users.  According to Technorati data as reported on Wikipedia, at the end of 2007 more than 112,000,000 blogs existed.

Blogs, Facebook and Twitter accounts, texting, and the use of other social media by employees can create many risks for employers.  Unlike conversations, social media postings leave a data trail — and that data trail can quickly be tracked, copied, and distributed to an unlimited number of readers.  The news headlines are filled with stories of poor judgment by employees on social media sites.  Microsoft fired an employee who published photos of Apple computers being loaded into a Microsoft research facility.  Delta airlines fired a flight attendant who posted photos of herself in a corporate uniform.  Google fired an employee who blogged about, among other things, Google’s compensation.

Singer summarizes employers’ risks from their employees’ social media activity as including:

• publication of trade secrets;
• dissemination of confidential information relating other employees, customers, or business partners;
• copyright and trademark infringement;
• libel; and
• loss of control of business reputation

The problem for employers seems to be that they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t. As marketing mavens turn from paper media, to Web, to blog, to Twitter campaigns and beyond, their corporate clients are feeling the pinch of a currently unfathomable economic slowdown, necessitating a higher ROI from potentially declining marketing budgets. One apparently easy answer may be to enlist and unleash employees with their low cost or no cost viral marketing abilities.

Although an instant army of marketing employees may seem a simple solution, Fred Abramson points out in his article, What you need to know about Defamation and Web 2.0:

Bloggers and anyone else using social media need to be aware of what they post online.  There is a serious threat of what you post can result in litigation.

I recently reported that there has been a 216% increase in libel lawsuits against bloggers.  Courtney Love’s Twitter defamation case is not going away.

Yelp, the popular review site, has been at the center of the debate because people are using the service to write reviews that are untrue.

A $1 million judgment, including an injunction and costs was granted against a defendant who persisted in posting false and defamatory statements in online forums regarding his fraudulent transactions at the expense of an online company.

OK, so maybe a little “sensitivity training” might be in order before unleashing the hordes of marketing hounds, but what if they turn on you? Deloitte LLP’s 2009 Ethics & Workplace survey indicated that:

60 percent of business executives believe they have a right to know how employees portray themselves and their organizations in online social networks. However, employees disagree, as more than half (53 percent) say their social networking pages are not an employer’s concern. This fact is especially true among younger workers, with 63 percent of 18–34 year old respondents stating employers have no business monitoring their online activity.

That said, employees appear to have a clear understanding of the risks involved in using online social networks, as 74 percent of respondents believe they make it easier to damage a company’s reputation.

With the explosive growth of online social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, rapidly blurring the lines between professional and private lives, these virtual communities have increased the potential of reputational risk for many organizations and their brands…

Could it be that lawyers may have the answer? Kate Early, corporate counsel for LexisNexis posted a nice article on her blog, “Social Networking Helps Cut Company Legal Fee Costs – How? Read on!”, which may give you a clue where I’m going with this. She notes:

Social networking is helping companies…cut legal fees by providing groups and forums for them to discuss and share ideas and answers to legal questions for free.  For instance, on Linked In, there are topic groups that you can subscribe to, like Intellectual Property.  You can then post questions and answer other people’s questions.  Human resources professionals are also benefiting.  Of course, there are issues about the lack of attorney-client privilege and there is no privacy to the questions.  However, for general inquiries that are not private … these sites can really help.

Neetal Parekh’s article, Legal Cost-Cutting and Social Networking: Strange Bedfellow, goes a little deeper:

Breaking down the buzz word “social networking” you get two core concepts of communication.  Social and networking.  Whether you are in a conference break-out session, happy hour, basketball court sideline, or company luncheon you have an opportunity to interact with others in a less-formal, more-personal way.  Similarly, social networking allows a candid flow of thought and exchange of ideas.  Just like your career counselors encouraged you to do in law school in their odes to the power of networking, connecting and sharing online is a form of networking.  And one that seems to be gaining some street cred from its offline cousin.  And though three years of legal training has drilled in considerations of liability, privacy, and confidentiality, it is up to the innovative devices of in-house counsel to find constructive and ethical uses of social networking that will inspire progress and productivity within their legal departments.

Woody Allen is quoted as saying: “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” Many of the financial advisors I’ve talked to in recent months, as well as wealthy clients, seem to be saying the same thing about survival in our depressed economy. Their goal, rather than making money, often focuses on not losing as much as anyone else. In the final analysis, they speculate (no pun intended), if they are able to keep from losing more of what they have than the competition loses, they’ll still be ahead of the game when things turn around, as they always do.

The depth of “expertise” of most social media consultants must be subject to scrutiny. After all, the field itself is still emerging and changing by the second. We’re all just starting to explore this murky new territory. The maps we draw for our clients to follow may sometimes be no more useful than a sandcastle built too close to the ocean surf.

Given the shifting sands on which we stand, our greatest success may come from simply failing to make as many mistakes as our competitors, and, as Woody Allen suggests, staying around for the next act.

We may not have a firm grip yet on what really works in the universe of social media. We are quickly learning, however, what doesn’t work, and how large the judgments, legal fees, and lost profits can be when we make easily avoidable mistakes. It is the avoidance of those mistakes that a well-formulated, organic social media policy can easily prevent. A good policy can encourage the cost saving benefits corporate lawyers have already found.

This is far from a perfect solution or tool, but the process of creating a social media policy for your company, getting employees and managers to buy into the process and become stakeholders in the positive results it can bring, can go a long way to making your company one of the survivors. That may be enough to make you the victor in your arena. I’ll explore this process in a future series of posts on this blog.

That’s what I think. Please leave a comment and let us know what you think.

If you are really interested, I just started yet another free group on LinkedIn, Social Media Search and Forensics. Many of these articles and discussion about them are posted there. Please join us.

Travel can be daunting. There’s so much you need to take into account, from the hard facts and figures of your itinerary to the feelings and opinions of people who have already been there and done that.

So we have asked Steven Domanski, one of the Amateur-Expert Travellers we identified during our research project, to outline some of his top tips for what you should be looking for. Steven is a thirty year-old venture capitalist who was born in Brussels and now lives in London. He travels regularly to the US, Europe and South America – so he knows about travel!

Here, Steven gives his take on travel tips, both from the technology perspective, and the people. And he looks ahead to a time when the two might not be quite as separated as they are now…

A checklist for travel – Steven Domanski

First, you’re sitting at a screen reading this, so it’s likely you’re looking online, right now, possibly considering how the internet can help you research, plan and book your travel.

Here are some tips which have helped me with regular travel over the recent years:

• It’s all about the price. Many of us are price-sensitive, especially during the current economic downturn, and the internet can be a great tool to help you hunt out the very best price for the travel you wish to take. Most airline websites today display the best available price during booking, which is great – but what about planning? What time is best to travel? The demand for flights and hotels can affect the price. By using websites like Farecast (the Bing Travel site) and Farecompare you can predict which months are going to cost less.
• Listen to your peers. Increasingly there are ways to check out the service levels and quality of service you should expect from other travellers. They are using forums, sites and blogs to provide feedback on the service they have received at hotels, airlines and destinations. Before I travel for leisure I usually consult blogs and forums to see what other travellers have to say. Delicious and Digg can be useful here. Delicious is a social bookmarking site, so by searching through that, you find pages that people have tagged – not computers! – which can add credibility to the results. Digg is similar, with people voting pages ‘up’ or ‘down’ in preference, so the ‘best’ pages float to the top. Again, you get consensus from people as to what is most relevant or helpful.
• Don’t settle for less. When I first started to travel, my budget meant I’d often book into hostels, but after further investigation it transpired that with a little careful planning I could have booked into a better quality of hotel under a promotional deal. The lesson for me was not to be put off by luxury brand positioning. It’s always worth a look.
• Loyalty schemes pay off. I’m a regular traveller (in the past this was often for business). By registering as a frequent flyer with my favorite airline and hotel chain I managed to amass a large number of loyalty points which translate into great value leisure trips and flights.
• Lead from the front. Of late I’ve been elected as group travel leader amongst my friends. This means booking our joint holidays and city breaks which can often be a complex process, requiring a lot of time and vast numbers of e-mails and phone calls. So, I’ve started to use travel booking applications on social networking sites like Facebook and investigated travel social networking sites like Tripmate. Some of these sites allow you to share calendars with friends and it takes the hassle out of the planning and booking stage.

I’m aware that everyone has their own personal favorites, so by all means, use every site at your disposal. And don’t forget that even seemingly unrelated sites such as Google Maps can help pin down locations, and there are many, many sites that can help with local knowledge.

There are also plenty of ratings and reviews sites that tell you in no uncertain terms what particular places are like, because they’re written by the people who have been there.

You can also take a look through blog search engines such as Google Blog Search or Technorati to find first-hand accounts that might help. Use them.

Don’t forget people!

And, at the end of the day, ask people!

This blog is called the Amateur-Expert Traveller blog for a reason. People are fast becoming experts themselves, and there’s no substitute for asking around. Those small hints and tips – for example, the best type of mosquito repellent, where to get visas, what sorts of vaccinations you might need – could help you avoid those minor irritations that can ruin any trip.

Increasingly there’s an interplay between people and technology, and this is giving rise to the Amateur-Expert Traveller. The tech seems to be empowering more people to find more experiences, and then to write about them online. I’ve already mentioned the blog search engines that might help, and blogs can be very powerful references from people who are passionate enough about travel to have written about it.

So the web is becoming an incredibly powerful way of conveying thoughts, feelings, emotions and opinions, and this can only benefit the travel industry and travellers alike.

Balance and decide

Still, it’s a balancing act. You need to balance out what you need, with what sites provide. You need to gauge how expert your advisors are. And there are probably plenty more decisions you’ll need to make, to get what you want.

Technology helps, and so do people. Amadeus looks to a future where both can work together more closely – where, instead of having to work around online systems, they work around you. Actually, it shouldn’t be a balancing act, because that takes time to learn. So for now, use the best of what’s available now, and talk to people, but look forward to a time when you get to play around, ask ‘what-if’ questions, and arrive at an itinerary without the hassle.

“NCT lecture is pushed to 8am tomorrow as our guest lecturer, Pat Law can only make it at 8am…”

I received this text message one Tuesday night, and I have to admit that I was one of the many souls that felt really sian. (haha, I don’t know any other word can better describe it) 8am lecture! It means that I’ll have to wake up at 5:50am that morning. Thankfully, it was all worth it.

Social Media doesn’t change the fact that people still express themselves. But it changes the way people communicate. Twitter, Facebook & Youtube is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

In this era where technology plays a huge part in everyone’s lives, no company can survive with the “I am the boss, I don’t care what others say” mentality. It is important to know what consumers want, what consumers say (78% of consumers believe in Word of Mouth, so don’t ever belittle it!). The consumers may not need your company; they can always go to your competitors if what you offer is not satisfactory. But what would your company do without the consumers?

(credits to Kellina)

One advice Pat Law gave: Listen.

How?

Websites like Technorati, Icerocket help search blogs, while MrTweet, Twellow tracks what people tweet about you and your company. That’s not all. These are just a handful, there’s so much more out there. Amazing isn’t it?

But companies aren’t the only ones that should be concerned about social media. You, yes you, the one behind the computer screen. Beware of what you post online, cos the Internet’s more powerful than what you think. With so many types of search engines, you’ll never know when your boss finds out your blog and –gasp!- reads all the not-very-nice things about him you post on your blog/twitter/facebook.

Some interesting facts learnt in lecture. Did you know that?
-87.4% people in Singapore consume Social Media
-500, 000 people on Facebook are from Singapore
-Xiaxue is mentioned by people every 16 hours

Thanks Pat for her time to guest lecture us! Definitely gained interesting and useful insights about Social Media. Now, excuse me while I go google myself..

It’s natural for parents to become overly involved in their children.  Family is important; however, when parents look for their identity needs to be met in their children – meaning, purpose, challenge, and joy – family friction and codependency take over healthy family dynamics.  (Dr. Randy Reynolds, Child Psychologist)

In other words, parents, don’t live through your child.  Get a life.  Work on issues, challenges, dreams, goals . . . Hmm . . . Much easier said than done. 

Taking risks, changing, (possible) failure . . . they CAN be scary.  It’s easier to blame someone else (e.g., a strong-willed child) for life’s difficulties than own up to our deficiencies.

But life’s lessons we choose to ignore will resurface until we learn.  Do we learn them now, later, or never?

Healthy parents, healthy kids — happiness!

I want to LIVE my life; my goals.  I want my family, too!  Gonna get ‘em all! 

CHARGE!!!