Most of us, including Bruce Springsteen himself, have thought it: there’s nothing on TV. This is despite the fact that many people who pay for cable or satellite subscriptions have constant access to hundreds of channels. Many of us lament, or perhaps are overwhelmed by, choice. While channel-surfing and looking for something new, you could consult a paper TV Guide, or its modern-day equivalent, the on-screen “grid” interface.
But now, a new Silicon Valley startup wants to change all that by harnessing a feature that most channels already output—closed captioning. Boxfish captures all closed-captioning information, indexes it, then makes that data searchable in a Twitter-style interface. All in real-time.
The company was founded in January 2011 and launched its “beta” search interface in March.
“We thought that this is a fantastic way to discover television,” said Eoin (pronounced like “Owen”) Dowling, who hails from Ireland, in an interview with Ars on Tuesday.
“Most people discover television using this grid. We turned this basically TweetDeck-like feed for television into a remote control for TV. So you’re at home and you tell us what you’re interested in, and we pop what’s happening in real time and then you can control your TV with it.”
The overflow of quick and witty reaction tweets to the new iPad name proves a name is never just a name. This applies for domain names, too. Here are tips to help you avoid these classic dot-com disasters — poolife.com, therapistsfinder.com or IPallover.com.
DomainNameSales.com, a name registration and web hosting company, created an infographic to teach brands domain name 101.
The first tip is to invest in your domain name as you would secure a primary location for a storefront.
“Don’t cut corners with your online identity,” says Frank Schilling, founder of DomainNameSales.com and an Internet entrepreneur. “A better domain name will lower your lifetime marketing costs.”
A great example of this is Diapers.com, which gets an average of 106 million unique visitors. More than half of these visitors found the site by using “diapers” as a search term. It’s the first thing that comes up on Google before a Wikipedia article about diapers, Walmart.com and Amazon.com.
Short, generic, descriptive and memorable adjectives make great website domains. Skip dashes, long names, broken language and made-up terms.
Many businesses make a mistake by quickly choosing to go with a name rather than weighing all the options, Schilling says.
SEE ALSO: Tea Party Domain Name Could Fetch $1 Million
Using a company name such as MagnoliasCupcake.com may be an obvious choice, but not the right one. Shorter, more memorable names like mycupcake.com and ilovecupcakes.com can make a difference.
Schilling said you should ask, “What message does your domain send?” when considering a branded domain or generic domain.
“Cupcakes.com may not be for everyone,” he said. “But owning the bold, generic single word or multi-word phrase that describes your services sends a powerful message to competitors and industry.”
Just as Facebook has secured numerous anti-Facebook or common Facebook.com typos, Schilling said you should do secure domain names for your brand — or someone you love. The domain guru registered a domain name 10 years ago for his 10-year-old nephew.
“The 7 billionth person has just been born on this planet and, in 10 years, he too will want an email address,” he says. “All these people will eventually aspire to own better names. The time to secure those better names is now.”
What crazy domain names have you seen on the Internet? Tell us in the comments.
Thumbnail courtesy of Flickr, liquene
More About: Business, Domain Names, infographic, Search, startup
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Klout now factors in YouTube activity as part of its scoring system for social influence.
The feature, which rolled out on Monday evening, allows a user to sync his or her YouTube and Klout accounts. Once synced, Klout will then analyze comments, engagement, likes, subscriber counts and other information in a user’s YouTube account and factor it into a user’s final Klout score. Klout uses social data from Twitter, Facebook and other social media services in order to score a user’s social influence from one to 100.
While some people may not care about a score of their social influence, more and more brands do. Businesses have been using Klout to identify social influencers in order to offer them perks and freebies. Most recently Klout partnered with Spotify to offer invites to users with high Klout scores.
The San Francisco-based startup has been on a roll in recent months. In June it added LinkedIn, and in July it started factoring in Foursquare data into Klout scores. It also launched a +K button to identify topical experts across social media. The startup has also announced that it will add Google+ once the search giant releases an API for its social network.
Klout has raised $10 million in three rounds of funding from Kleiner Perkins, Greycroft Partners, Mayfield Fund, ff Venture Capital, Lucid Ventures and a host of angel investors, including Paige Craig and Bobby Yazdani.
More About: klout, social media, youtube
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David Rosenberg is Director of Innovation at LBi in the U.S., the world’s leading independent global marketing and technology agency.
For startups, selling advertising agencies on your technology can be fraught with difficulty. As startups emerge from their development cycles, investors begin clamoring to get the prototype to market. What follows is a flurry of meetings with brand marketers and advertising agencies in an attempt to secure funding and a business application for the new product.
Many startups assume that their brilliant, game-changing products will sell themselves. It’s at this point that mistakes happen, destroying any chance of meaningful funding and exposure. As someone who’s been tasked with innovation on the agency side for years, and sat through countless meetings with startups, I’ve compiled a guide to make the most of each agency funding opportunity.
1. It’s Not About You, It’s About Them
This meeting is not about you and your idea. It’s about finding a practical and profitable business application for your product. To avoid that glazed-over look as your audience tunes out, do yourself a favor: help them help you. Do your research on the agency and its clients. Have a look at their video case studies. Make an attempt to understand their brands and business challenges. In the agency world, this is called working back to the creative brief. Figure out why your service is best-suited to help the agency or a particular client.
2. Focus the Conversation on User Experience and Agility
Your pitch should emphasize how your product or service was designed with the end-user’s needs in mind. Agencies need to know that your product is more than just a working piece of technology. You may even consider enlisting a UX designer to help with your pitch. Further, it’s critical that you show your ability to manage the product or technology in an agile and flexible manner during the build-out process. Be sure to mention this — it will go a long way in reassuring the agency that it has a real partner.
3. Demonstrate Measurement and Support Capabilities
Make sure you have a sophisticated measurement and accountability system embedded into your technology. Analytics are essential components of the agency business, so be sure to address the topic in your presentation. Also mention your team, however small, in your pitch. Even though you may be a small startup, you have to reassure the agency that you and your team will be able to see the project through to the end.
4. Meet with Key Decision-Makers, Avoid a Run-Around
Many constituents in the agency world have overlapping jobs. While meeting with the CEO or president is ideal, don’t neglect other important titles like the chief technology officer, innovation directors, emerging media directors and strategic planning directors. It can also be helpful to invite a specific account director (sometimes called business directors or management supervisors), as they often represent a direct budget connection, as well as the needs of a particular brand. Avoid the run-around by properly managing the follow-up. It’s important to persist corresponding with the agency in general, but also to identify the appropriate decision-making advocate who will become your agency partner.
5. Entertain Multiple Business Opportunities and Models
Explore the many innovative business models and opportunities in today’s marketing industry. The most straightforward method is piloting your service into a funded brand program. Be prepared to discuss the fees that make the investment worth your time and effort, as well as the costs you are willing to absorb to get the deal done.
Strategic partnerships can also help grow your business. Agencies can assemble many partners around a brand’s table. Look for in-kind opportunities within agencies, for example, high-value media and promotions which would otherwise be financially impossible to you. Lastly, some agencies are now investing in new technology and services as revenue-sharing deals or equity plays. Consider that many agencies could see you as a long-term investment. The important thing is to be prepared for any opportunity and keep an open mind.
Image courtesy of Flickr, George Jonathan
More About: ad agency, business, funding, startup
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Note-taking platform Evernote has just released Evernote Peek, a first-of-its-kind application for the iPad 2 Smart Cover that is designed to help you study and improve your memory.
The application works in conjunction with the Smart Cover so that each time you partially lift the cover, your iPad 2 will awake and you’ll be presented with a question. Lift the cover a bit more and you can peek at the answer.
The Evernote Peek Smart Cover application is a modern interpretation on the age-old practice of memorizing study materials with notecards. Here, the notecards are replaced by your Evernote notes and your memorization skills are put to the test each time you lift your Smart Cover.
Evernote Peek connects to your Evernote account so you can select your notebooks and turn them into study guides. The application also includes a selection of Evernote-generated notebooks on study topics. These notebooks include World Capitals, Collective Nouns and Word Quiz.
When you’re ready to quiz yourself, simply select a notebook and close your Smart Cover. Then, lift it a smidgen to see your first question. When you peek at the answer, mark whether your guess was correct or incorrect, and close the cover to continue.
The application was created after Evernote’s CEO and founder Phil Libin and VP of marketing Andrew Sinkov were toying around with the iPad 2.
“Of all its features, the thing that floored us was the ingenious Smart Cover,” Sinkov says. “It didn’t seem like an accessory so much as an extension of the device. As we sat there opening and closing the cover, a question struck us, could we use the cover to control an app that would make Evernote even more useful?”
