Interactive Angle

Fotomoto - Instant Photo Commerce Solution For Your Web Site or Blog

Fotomoto is an essential online photo commerce solution that enables photographers to sell their photos and while focusing on what they do best, taking pictures.

The online solution enables anyone with photographic content to sell their photos directly from their Web site or blog. From the order processing to shipping a photo, Fotomoto is able to handle the purchase transaction simple by adding a couple lines of code to your Web site or blog. In addition through the Fotomoto control panel, a user is able to set the pricing and availability of their photos, manage their orders and even track analytics data such as how many times a photo has been viewed.

So how does Fotomoto make money? - Only when a purchase transaction takes place.

Once a transaction takes place Fotomoto asks for a 15% commission fee to cover cost and payment processing fees. Simply put you only pay if you are making money as well. This means there are no monthly fees or licensing costs.

Sources:

• Fotomoto Web site
• Fotomoto FAQs
• See Fotomoto in action - Chromasia, Daily Dose of Imagery 

Twitter Promotions - Real Results For Small Businesses

An article in Advertising Age showed some actual results when local businesses started marketing themselves using Twitter. Due to Twitter's low barrier to entry it has a "golden trait that appeals to small businesses: It's easy." Below are a few highlights of two successfull Twitter promotions.

Naked Pizza, a New Orleans healthful-pizza shop

• Twitter promotion conducted on April 23
• Brought in 15% of the day's business
• All phone calls and orders were tracked by where it came from
• Naked Pizza's Twitter Feed

Berry Chill, a yogurt shop with three Chicago locations

• Used Twitter to send out "Sweet Tweets"
• Promos required users to show they're Twitter followers of the store
• Last big promotion Berry Chill gave away 1,100 yogurts -- $5,500 worth of product -- but sales were the same as the day before.
• The people who were existing customers standing in line at Berry Chill attracted people who hadn't tried it.
• Berry Chill's Twitter Feed

Source: Advertising Age

Social Media - Research Shows A Connection Between What Is Said Online And Sales

Recently I am across research that was conducted by Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management on a trending analysis of social media. According to research conducted by Kellogg, there is a measurable connection between what is being said about a product in online posts and real-time customer behavior. Listening to what people are saying about your product can be a valuable method of improving corporate performance. Becoming aware of online comments and learning how to use the information can avert potential downturns in sales and can help companies fine-tune their marketing.

Other key points within the Article:

• Traditional research has shown that a relatively small group of people can have a substantial influence on the majority. Researchers have also found that the same is true in online communities.
• By monitoring online postings, a firm can find out much sooner if there is negative sentiment among customers about the brand.
• The highly influential posters tend to have an especially intense interest in the brand, either positive or negative. Because of this intense interest, they are more likely to advocate a strong opinion, which in turn has a much bigger influence on potential purchasers than does the opinion of the average user.
• Social buzz whether positive or negative, is a leading indicator of sales.
• The authors of the article suggest that firms should monitor online word of mouth in order to “stay ahead of the race.

Source: Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management - People are Talking

Novatel MiFi - A Portable Wireless Router

Imagine if you could get online anywhere you liked without using a cellular modems from Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile or AT&T. Even better what if you had a private hot spot, that followed you everywhere you go and allowed all of your gadgets to be online at once? Well starting mid-May Verizon will be offering the Novatel MiFi 2200.

The Novatel MiFi 2200 or MiFi is a portable wireless router that will deliver wireless 3G data network access to multiple users in a small area (about 30 feet radius). Much the same size as a credit card, the MiFi will have the ability to let users select access to different types of high speed data networks.

The MiFi offers Internet connectivity that can be shared not only between users but between devices such as laptops, cameras, gaming devices (i.e. Nintendo DS or Sony PSP), iTouch, iPOD and multimedia players. In addition the MiFi will be able support up to five users simultaneously. Finally, the MiFi's battery is supposed to run for only four hours a charge (it’s rated at 40 hours of standby). However, after 30 minutes of inactivity the Mifi will go into sleep mode to prolong its battery life.

Source: New York Times - Wi-Fi to Go, No Cafe Needed

Bizual - Online Community for Small Businesses And Freelancers

Bizual is a unique online community based platform that helps small businesses and freelancers acquire customers through online offers. The offers usually contain special deals for product and/or services. Some examples of the offers include free strategy consultation or 30% off on design services. Many of the offers found within the Bizual community are useful, not only for businesses looking for great deals or get exposure, but for the general customer as well.

In my opinion Bizual is a much needed service for small businesses and freelancers in today's challenging economic environment. The tool not only allows small businesses and freelancers to creatively market their products and/or services, but it allows them to connect to the Bizual community to form business relationships.

Source: Bizual

Cool Gigapixel Images

A gigapixel image is a digital image composed of more than one billion pixels. It contains more than 150 times the detail captured by a typical 6-megapixel consumer camera.

Check out this picture!

Vancouver Yaletown Condos - Make sure to zoom into the buildings to view the details.

Source:

• More Details Gigapixel Images
• Other Gigapixel Images

Wolfram Alpha - Computational Knowledge Online Engine

New computational knowledge online engine, called Wolfram Alpha, is meant to answer specific factual questions in a far more precise way than any search engine. For example, it will parse questions like “What is the GDP France?” or “What is the temperature in Chicago?” and rather than simply pulling up sites that have the answer on them it will compute answers and relevant visualizations on the fly. The visualizations include the display of factual data, histograms and/or other related dynamic charts.

Wolfram Alpha was created by Stephen Wolfram's company called Wolfram. The computational knowledge online engine will be launch later this month.

Sources:

• Wolfram Alpha - Computational knowledge online engine
• Wikipedia - Stephen Wolfram
• Wired Magazine Article - The Man Who Cracked The Code to Everything
• More information about Stephen Wolfram
• Wolfram Corporate Site

American Well Inc. - A Doctor's Visit Is Now Online And In Real-Time

In January, American Well Inc. went live with a Web service that allows patients to communicate with doctors via online video, text chat or phone. The service is currently available only in Hawaii and Minnesota. If insured by Blue Cross patients pay $10 for a 10-minute visit; uninsured or non-member patients pay $45 for a 10-minute consultation.

Key features of this online service include:

• No need to make an appoint
• Doctors available 24 hours a day
• Immediate access to primary care physicians and a variety of specialists from home, securely, privately, and in real time
• After conversation summary can be sent to regualar physician(s).

Source: American Well Inc.

ExecTweets.com - Find, Follow And Engage Top Business Executives

With the growing popularity of Twitter, more and more C-level executives are finding the time to share their insights about their industry and the world around them.

For C-Level executives this trend makes sense because an executive’s time is so valuable, micro-blogging takes much less time than blogging and the public sees it as a great view of a company communicating with its users, shareholders and customers. With over 100,000 C-level executives on Twitter today it's difficult to know how to find them. Well thanks to Ferderated Media, Twitter and Microsoft this is not the case anymore.

In March 2009 Ferderated Media, Twitter and Microsoft launched a site called ExecTweets.com. The Web site is a real-time tool that helps you to find, follow and engage with the world’s most successful business executives on Twitter. In addition to following their tweets, ExecTweets.com aggregates tweets into industry verticals like Healthcare, Retail, Finance and more. Below are some of of the executives that are followed:

• Adam Brown, Coca-Cola

• Alex Chriss, Intuit
• Alex Yoder, WebTrends
• Barry Judge, BestBuy
• Barb Iverson, Weber Shandwick
• Bart Cas, Pepsi-Cola
• Billy Sanez, American Airlines
• Brad Smith, Microsoft
• Craig Newmark, Craigslist
• Daniel Rasumus, Microsoft
• David Armano, Critical Mass
• David Sifry, Technorati
• David Williams, MedPharma
• Don Dodge, Microsoft
• Doug Ulman, Lance Armstrong Foundation
• Evan Williams, Twitter
• Georgy Colony, Forrester Research
• Jason Buss, Ameriprise Financial
• Jay Adelson, Digg
• John Battelle, Federated Media Publishing
• Jonathan Schwartz, Sun Microsystems
• Kevin Rose, Digg
• Marc Monseau, Johnson & Johnson
• Marcel LeBrun, Radian6
• Margret Schmidt, TiVo Inc.
• Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks, HDNet
• Mark Relph, Microsoft Canada
• Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
• Michael Arrington, TechCrunch
• Pete Blackshaw, Nielsen Online
• Pete Cashmore, Mashable
• Phil Johnson, PJA Advertising
• Pierre Omidyar, eBay
• Randall Rothenberg, Interactive Advertising Bureau
• Richard Binhammer, Dell
• Tony Hsieh, Zappos
• Tony Uphoff, TechWeb
• Veronica Fielding, Digital Brand Expressions
• Vivek Ranadive, TIBCO
• Warren L. Habib, MTV
• Werner Vogels, Amazon.com

Sources:

• ExecTweets.com
• Federated Blog Post About ExecTweets.com
• Full list of executives followed

Playing For Change: World Collaboration Of Stand By Me

From the award-winning documentary, "Playing For Change: Peace Through Music", comes the first of many "songs around the world" being released independently. Stand By Me was recorded by completely unknown artists in a street virtual studio all around the world.

Watch it from beginning to end—you will not regret it.

Join the Movement to help build schools, connect students, and inspire communities in need through music.

Source: Playing For Change