Image via Wikipedia In 1770, Johann Wolfgang Ritter von Kempelen invented an automaton chess-playing machine affectionately known in modern times as "The Turk". For more than 80 years the 'machine' toured Europe and the Americas, defeating most of its opponents -- including Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin. In 1820, Surprise! As if anyone didn't know, the chess-playing Turk was exposed as a hoax, a parlor trick, powered by humans stuffed inside the machine -- not automated...
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My team had a call with a prospective client the other day. I sat in and listened as the client made some frank observations about ‘SEO people’. In essence, she said her company’s progress with SEO always seems to miss the mark because consultants can never get past their own knowledge. They spend too much time bragging about their elite technical competency or secret strategies; and too little time understanding her business. I’m not always...
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A big thanks again to our frends at the Design Commission for hooking us up with iPhone stencils for our recent School of Visual Concepts mobile design workshop. We had a great turnout and the attendees were super-excited when we handed the stencils out. (there is still space available for our March session if iterested.) The stencils are made by UI Stencils and come in many flavors - iPhone, Android, iPad, etc. They also have...
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It's been 5 months since Erik Koto left ZAAZ to do volunteer work in Ladakh. Yesterday, we received an in-depth update about what he's been doing with his time away. Below Erik returns as a ZAAZ blogs Guest Author to share the story of his work in Ladakh. Himalayan Folk Recordings - Powered by ZAAZ by Erik Koto How do you go head-to-head against Brittany Spears and Bollywood when you're promoting centuries old folk songs...
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Imagine—the economy is in recession, budgets are t-i-g-h-t, yet you still need to provide recommendations that are based on more than a hunch. What’s a digital agency to do? Thank goodness for that word, “digital,” as the advent of new technologies has made it possible to get actionable insights at a lower cost, often with even better data quality. This will be the first of several posts on how ZAAZ is using Remote Research methods...
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There are so many ways to answer this question. I've been trying to answer this question for at least a year, in terms of how we position our agency services and capabilities -- and I think I have the answer. But first, lets discuss why it's so difficult to consistently and concisely define SEO/Social kinship and fit it neatly into a box. There are many reasons -- a few of of them include: 1. Subjective...
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ZAAZ has three submissions in the SXSW PanelPicker. We guarantee education, entertainment and surprises. Voting ends August 27th! Look at our ideas, ask us questions, vote for us, and let's take 6th street by storm! Rich Devine "Mobilizing Performance From Search" By 2012, 20 percent of all search queries will come from a mobile device. While there is growing focus on creating mobile site experiences and applications, not enough businesses focus on their mobile search...
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The Wall Street Journal has an amazing interactive piece entitled "What They Know" that focuses on the data that is collected and used for tracking and reporting by 50 of the most visited sites on the Web. Play around with it for a while- you get a sense of the massive amounts of data that popular sites such as ebay and CNN.com collect about you behind the scenes and how that data might impact your...
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Facebook is pushing the mocial envelope these days. At the MobileBeat 2010 conference in SF earlier this week, Facebook announced that it will be extending its Open Graph platform to mobile, moving away from an individual mobile app strategy and moving into a let's-allow-facebook-to-be-connected-into-everything strategy. What does this mean? App makers will now be able to connect into the Facebook platform and incorporate data into their own apps, leveraging information such as friend recommendations. It's...
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Online reputation management has become an increasingly hot topic as mass adoption of social media progresses. There are no shortages of issues or drama that overtakes blog posts, trending topics and social commentary, the new reality is that no brand – whether consumer or personal – is exempt. I know I am stating the obvious here, but it’s for this reason that engaging in social media is tenuous for companies and individuals, since there is...
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Recently I went to get a sandwich and had an experience which my friend and colleague Kat Tillman said- “hey that would be a great blog post.” So, alas this social media strategist is finally walking the walk and posting to the ZAAZ blog. Ok, so here’s the deal – I ordered my sandwich on a super handy kiosk and even paid with the handy-dandy swiper dealy. Then, decided after a couple minutes of standing...
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At last week's 20th annual Computers, Freedom & Privacy (CFP) summit in San Jose, participants and practitioners debated and proposed a Social Network Users' Bill of Rights, designed to represent the denizens of the social ecosystem out there (in here?). Facebook, Google Whatever, Twitter, this is mostly about you guys. You can tell that these principles weren't written by politicians or (exclusively) lawyers, since they are clear, intelligible, and brief enough to be included in...
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What can your website activity tell you about your brick and mortar sales? Ever wondered when your website metrics go up, if it means you’ll actually sell more products offline? While ecommerce activity continues to grow in all categories, for many companies the majority of online shopping activity still results in a purchase being made through an offline (brick and mortar) retailer. As part of our Monetization Modeling practice we analyze this relationship so that...
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If you are a search marketer, and you haven’t been locked in your basement playing Dungeons & Dragons while your ranking reports run, you’ve probably heard -- and either shrugged or freaked out – about Google’s announced launch of 'encrypted search'. In a nut-shell, this secure version (https) of Google is supposed to allow users to freely search without fear of their search behavior being ‘observed’. Google’s own Search-Spam-Czar (not an official Obama administration post),...
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Recently, the conversation of matching paid search clicks (from Google or Dart) to paid search site side reporting (Omniture or WebTrends) came back on the radar. I have had this same conversation many times in the past and have given many good reasons, but the truth of the matter is that the two sets of numbers will never match and we as a collective group should stop trying to get them to match. The two...
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