Although Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was before my time (1954), my dad was a fan so I remember watching it when I was young. It may be time for a refresher though.

Google Street View

Hospital Aleman

DHL Online Tracking

Direct Ski

The Guitar Store

Can you guess what you can't see on Google Maps?

We’ve had a lot of conversations in the office about the power of Google and what they might do with it. Google has a great office culture (Google “google office“) and provides many free apps, such as Docs, Analytics, and Maps to drive traffic to their websites. I am still astonished every time I look at the street views on Google Maps and see some of my favorite places.

I recently found this video that made my think that A) Google has a conscience or B) Google is not the most powerful organization in the world. This video shows you 10 spots on Google Maps that you can’t see. Most of them are military and government related, but check it out. There is an entire country that is not shown in detail. Can you guess what it is? You may be right.

It seems that Apple is more and more interested in determining how content will flow through its tubes. It claims that Adobe’s Flash is “buggy,” and it wants a more “open” world wide web.

Apple is pushing for HTML5, which is technically open source programming. Anyone with text edit and a little bit of knowledge can write code for HTML5, unlike coding for Adobe’s Flash, which requires several hundred dollars investment into proprietary software.

Google has fired back at Apple, embracing Flash. It recently announced that a Flash plugin will be bundled with its Chrome browser for Windows. This means there won’t be a need to download Flash’s plugin manually, allowing a smoother experience for the end user.

This is a direct shot at Apple that refuses to allow Flash content on any of its devices, like the iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad, by not supporting flash content on its proprietary browser, Safari.

Personally, I don’t understand Apple’s aversion to letting the user and developer decide how they create media and view that media on an Apple device.

Luckily, Apple hasn’t pushed to remove Flash on their desktop or laptop computers. But one can only assume it would be a matter of time before they try to start pushing in that direction.

Here’s the problem:

It’s the same problem you’ve heard us complain about with Internet Explorer, and that is the lack of support for new technologies on certain browsers. Once Apple starts to ban certain technologies on their devices, developers will be forced to build to the lowest common denominator; which means skipping flash altogether.

Now, before I get any feedback about HTML5 and how it’s a superior technology, let me say this: I’m not here to tout Flash over HTML5, or vise versa. Both have their advantages.

Flash for instance allows for smoother animation of objects, more integration of actual animation, rather than objects moving, but it is not great for adding content because of Search Engine Optimization reasons. Search bots can’t index flash content as well, for instance.

HTML5 allows for lots of dynamic content, which can be indexed by search bots, but it requires much more technical knowledge of JavaScript and there is no graphic interface to design dynamic HTML5 content.

I don’t develop in Flash, for some of the reasons stated above, but I recognize the value of a really cool, interactive flash intro for certain situations. Just click around the movie site for “District 9″ as an example of a great way to integrate flash into a website – d-9.com.

Unfortunately, you wouldn’t be able to view any of that on an iPad.

What I don’t agree with is a platform dictating to the developer and end user what programs they can or cannot use. If Flash were as bad as Apple claims it to be, wouldn’t Flash’s own shortcomings ultimately do it in? And wouldn’t it be up to Adobe to fix those problems to make it a viable technology? Flash’s pitfalls should be the downfall of Flash, not Apple’s decisions to forgo its use.

You can read up more about the Apple/Google spat here:

• blogs.zdnet.com
  
• computerworld.co.nz
  
• podcastingnews.com

Net censorship is a huge deal. Not just for citizens of the free world, but for the less fortunate living under authoritarian regimes and dictatorships it means the difference between freedom and tyranny. Being able to share differing views and opinions is a basic human right that just about every civilized nation can agree on.

Governments should be transparent and honest, because it is the governments job to protect and serve it’s people. If it weren’t for its citizens, a government would have no reason to exist. And just like the government, without your customers your business would have no reason to exist.

I don’t think it’s a huge jump to compare your business’ brand perception with the perception of the most powerful businesses in the land.

Having an open, transparent facade is not only important for governments, but it can be immensely important for your business as well. This can be especially true for firms that acquire more influence and power as they grow.

Being a rights junkie and free speech advocate to the max, one of the things that bugs me to no end is when a business gets upset at bad reviews or negative criticism and tries to delete those reviews or criticism from it’s blog, Facebook page, review site, etc.

It’s completely dishonest and misleading. Normally, it causes a bigger stir and free press for the reviewers, which only  makes it worse for yourself.

Recently, Nestle Foods created a huge fiasco by deleting negative comments on their Facebook page. In the end, they ended up making themselves look bad and only helped Green Peace get some free press, which is exactly what they were trying to avoid. Read the CNET article here.

Any rational person knows that a business won’t be right 100% of the time. The question you need to answer is, “How do you handle it now,” and “What do I do to fix this?” The correct answer is not covering up the problem and pretending like it never happened.

For most businesses, the answer is finding out what you did wrong, then fixing it so that it never happens again. Negative feedback from customers can be crucial when finding problems in your business model.

What are your thoughts on government censorship?

Their first ad ever aired during Super Bowl 44 (that’s in 2010). I would be willing to bet that it was the cheapest to produce out of all the commercials that night, yet for me, it was the most effective.

It really is remarkable how much imagery was set off in my head by such a seemingly simple advertisement. By showing us 12 simple live keyword searches, Google managed to tell us an entire love story, from beginning to happy ending.

If you weren’t one of the 106 million people that watched the game, or if you just want to watch it again, you can follow along here.

“Study abroad in Paris“ – We start off with a (presumably) young male looking for a way to study abroad. What better place to start than Google?

“Cafés near the Louvre“ – We assume he’s found the right place to study, has just gotten off the plane, and is looking for  a place to relax near the Louvre in Paris. Oh, he’s found a place called the cabaret. That sounds nice. Maybe he’ll have a coffee and a croissant. I bet it’s nice outside.

(Did you notice he misspells Louvre – ‘Loo’? It ads a bit of realism to it.)

“Translate ‘tu es trés mignon’“ – A french girl has come up to our young student and said, “Tu es trés mignon.” He hasn’t got a clue what that means. Thanks to Google, he’s found out what it means. A French girl thinks he’s very cute?! What a great first day in Paris!

“Impress a French girl“ – Now that he knows she likes him, what is he going to do to impress her? What better way to find out than with Google?

“Chocolate shops in Paris France” - Thanks to Google, he’s found out that French girls love nothing more than chocolate. Thanks to the advice from Google, he finds “Cacao et Chocolate,” where the girl behind the counter tells him that a French girl’s favorite thing in the world is a truffle. He had better get her a truffle!

“What are truffles?“ – A what? A truffle? What the heck is a truffle?! Google to the rescue.

“Who is Truffaut“ – Since he’s new to Paris, and he’s not very fluent in French, our young student misunderstands the clerk at Cacao et Chocolat. A French girl’s favorite thing isn’t a truffle at all (silly Americans)! It’s the influential French film maker, François Truffaut! And luckily, “Day For Night” is her favorite film!

“Long distance relationship advice“ – Our young French girl was obviously impressed by our young student’s knowledge of French New Wave film. They both know it’ll be hard, but they’re determined to make it work.

“Jobs in Paris“ - Our two long distance love birds have suffered through several semesters away from each other. Graduation is only a few short months away. It’s time to start searching for jobs in Paris.

“DL 8601” - Our student is nervous. This is a big step. He checks his flight status to make sure everything is on time and ready to go.

Interestingly, this search term was changed from the original that aired on YouTube several months ago. The original search term was “AA 120.” If you notice the results, there are two hits for audio equipment. Did Google change the search term to get rid of irrelevant results? I think so.

“Churches in Paris“ – Their patience has paid off. He’s asked her father for permission, and now it’s time to find the right place. Not just any place will do. Ah, the Paoisse Saint Léon. A beautiful church on Place du Cardinal Amette. Perfect for this budding couple. They even have a website where they can see pictures of previous weddings online, from the comfort of their Paris flat.

“How to assemble a crib“ – The Paoisse Saint Léon on Place du Cardinal Amette was a beautiful ceremony. The newly weds immediately left for their honeymoon and began growing their family. There’s only one problem, he’s not very mechanically inclined. Thank God for Google!

—

Google told us this entire story without actually saying anything. All of this imagery was portrayed by the simple use of searching for everyday things online via their search engine. I’m sure this ad wasn’t made to turn any Bing or Yahoo users into avid Google followers, but what it did do was evoke an emotional response from Google’s already established users to make sure they weren’t going anywhere.

Overall, the ad was simple and well put together. It wasn’t the normal, over the top, cute animals talking, unfunny celebrity cameo garbage we normally get for a Super Bowl commercial.

This ad was only one in the series of videos made by Google called “Search Stories,” which you can find here: http://www.youtube.com/searchstories. they’re all similar to this, with subjects ranging from starting high school to fixing pot holes, but this one was definitely the most heart warming.

This ad had class, and I dug it.

Google hasn’t released all of the details, and they probably won’t (we still don’t know the exact algorithms Google uses to determine page rank – it’s a closely guarded secret).

I think one thing everyone would agree with is that a fast website is preferable to a slow website. Waiting over one minute for a web page to load is pretty much unacceptable by anyone’s standards. Most web users have gotten used to quick internet connections, and waiting more than ten seconds for a page to load is probably too much for most people to stand.

However, there could be deeper implications for smaller web shops and hosting companies than what might appear at first glance.

On the surface, it seems like a reasonable thing for most web developers to strive for anyway. If your page is that slow, chances are your user experience is going to end up being pretty bad. You probably won’t get many hits, and after a while your views will start to decrease. You really shouldn’t be on the first page of Google anyway. It’s a good idea to keep speed in mind anyway, right?

Of course it is.

Here are the concerns some people are having with this concept hinted at by Google. 

Many small e-commerce sites, web shops, and hosting companies rely heavily on page ranking for their business to succeed. It’s an extremely cost effective way to advertise, and for some tech savvy companies, they can do all of this internally and not spend an extra dime for the increase in business. What happens to these companies when Google starts putting the pages that load faster on the top of the list?

If Google starts implementing this scheme based solely on page load times, Amazon.com or Ebay.com, or any companies with the financial capitol to do so will quickly upgrade their servers, connections, hardware, software, etc. to the newest and fastest technology at their disposal, no matter what the cost. Some big companies might even be able to finance development of new technology to increase speed.

For the smaller companies, however, with servers costing thousands of dollars, the likelihood of smaller companies being able to compete with larger firms becomes harder and harder, and much less likely, nearly impossible.

Of course, none of this is set in stone, and it really all stems from an interview with an employee of Google, albeit very high level employee. Google has yet to release more information about what they plan to do.

It is possible they could base rankings on scores from applications such as Yahoo’s YSlow or Google’s own speed tester. If that is the case, smaller firms would be able to optimize their websites to compete with larger firms.

At Design the Planet we optimize all of our sites using these tools, which help us get quick load times. The problem, eventually, will be that companies with billions of dollars to spend will always be able to out spend smaller companies.

Is it fair they should be out ranked only because of lack of capital to invest in better technology? Is it possible that Google isn’t the gentle giant after all?

This can be detrimental to small businesses because it will show user reviews in the sidebar while reviewing a business’ website. We all know an upset customer yells louder & harder than 100 happy customers. I use web comments & ratings when I’m researching a company, but I look where they are listed and actually read the comments with a grain of salt for credibility.

In the early days of the internet, basically the 1990s, the meta tags helped rank your website higher in the search engines for all of the keywords you listed in the meta tags. Website designers & marketers would stuff keywords, some useful and some fluff, to make their website rank higher. It was easy to saturate the website with keywords, but the search engines like Google, Yahoo & MSN (now Bing) quickly caught on and made it less important. Today, meta tags do not rank your website any higher, but they are important still. One of the most important meta tags is the description tag which is used by the search engines for the text just below your website when searched. (See example below)

The meta text also helps position your website correctly. Design the Planet is a New Orleans Graphic Design & Web Design firm that does not work nationally. We use keywords in our meta keywords text including “New Orleans” and “Louisiana”. Design the Planet does not need to appear with someone is searching for Seattle Design or London Website Designers.

In the end, meta tags are important, but not as important as they once were in ranking your website.

We work numerous websites in testing until they are perfect and ready to publish and sometimes with the more intricate programming, we do a live testing period, but nothing more that one month. In comparison to Google, the giant, we’re just an ant not even David fighting Goliath, so why can they beta test everything to death?

Google removed the beta tag to attract more business to using their service. Hmmm. Why would a business not trust a company’s program that has been in beta testing for a few years? Did marketing finally talk to the programming department about fighting this uphill battle in sales?

Google does admit in an article in USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/hotsites/2009-07-07-gmail-beta_N.htm?csp=usat.me) that they are not done with making changes. This is one of the beauties of the web, that it is eternally updatable. Which leaves me to wonder, WHY DIDN’T YOU REMOVE THE BETA TAG SOONER GOOGLE IF YOU KNEW YOU COULD MAKE CHANGES LATER!?!

Google jokes about the usage of the word “beta” and its removal from Gmail as well as from the Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk on their own blog (http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/gmail-leaves-beta-launches-back-to-beta.html).