Online Marketing & Photography

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The definite new iOS 7 looks, special designed by Johny Ive

So basically today's new about the new iOS 7 looks is that it will be black & white and flat
Where did I see that before ??

Visualize your Site's Link Graph with NodeXL - State of Search

Great tricks to get the visualization going for links to your site. Only a shame that it seems that it´s windows only. Anyone has a Mac or a Google Docs version?

The Business case for Chrome on iOS

Why would Google make Chrome available for the iOS devices? Aren´t they in bitter competition and so why make it nice to stay on a competitors platform?

Business case chrome ios

This is a question I get a lot in discussions about the Apple vs Google competition.

The short answer is : Money.

The longer answer is: To save money on the TAC (Traffic Acquisition Costs) they pay to Apple and to get the more data from the user.

Saving on the TAC.

Google pays every-time in a period a certain amount of money to Apple for the traffic Apple brings them. That´s called the Traffic Acquisition Costs in Search Engine terms. It´s a fairly normal way of doing business and getting more traffic to the search engines.

Thanks to some good investigation from Horace Dediu on the Asymco, we know that Google spend up to 1.4 billion dollar to Apple in 2011. That´s a lot of money even for Google.

But then the next episode is when the user comes via a Google channel, they don´t have to pay anything. That´s where the Google Chrome browser comes into play.

Every percentage they can erase from this 1.4 billion US dollar on TAC will be additional profit for Google.

So since the launch of Chrome for iOS on 26 June 2012 until now (2 August 2012) , the browser have captured 1.7% of the browser market.

A short calculation makes this already a saving for Google of 23.8 million dollar. (1400 million divided by 100 multiplied by 1.7) This maybe peanuts in the grand scheme of things but for sure they are happy with every dollar less towards Apple.

Get more data from the user.

It´s quite know that Apple´s safari browser really has some very high anti-advertising features. For example the standard setting of blocking 3rd party cookies and the Reader feature within the browser.

With the launch of the Chrome browser Google is able to recapture this data again and get even more data of the user. It´s not for nothing that if you´re logged in you get a lot of extra additional features, like tab synching, remembering of Passwords and logins , etc. With these extra features available the user will be much more inclined to active their account and hand Google over their user data and usage of the browser.

For additional reading about this subject I can highly recommend Searchengineland.com and Marketingland.com

Biggest TEAHUPOO ever on video

The Biggest Teahupoo ever on Video

[vimeo 35328567 w=500 h=281]

BIGGEST TEAHUPOO EVER from UnFuzzy on Vimeo.

This day at Teahupoo- Aug 27th 2011 during the Billabong Pro waiting period is what many are calling one of the biggest and gnarliest Teahupoo ever ridden. Chris Bryan was fortunate enough to be there working for Billabong on a day that will go down in the history of big wave surfing. The French Navy labeled this day a double code red prohibiting and threatening to arrest anyone that entered the water.
Kelly Slater described the day by saying "witnessing this was a draining feeling being terrified for other people's lives all day long, it's life or death. Letting go of that rope one time can change your life and not many people will ever experience that in their life."
All images where shot by Chris Bryan using the Phantom HD Gold camera. To see more of Chris' work check out his website. WWW.CHRISBRYANFILMS.COM
Music: Lower Your Eyelids to Die with the Sun' by M83.
by Chris Bryan

Thanks to Kottke.org and Colossal

Amazing shots from one of the biggest Teahupoo ever and the biggest ever shot on video.

This video is a real must-see and it keeps you very impressed for a long time..

A few tidbits of information about Teahupoo

Teahupoo is an island part of Tahiti, the southern pacific ocean. Within the surf scene it's really well-known for it's heavy waves. Since 1999 ASP world tour event champsions takes place on the island.

If you would like to know some more background information have a look at Surfline coverage.

Tim Cook At Goldman Sachs

Tim Cook speaking at a Goldman Sachs conference

Very interesting 45 minutes, if you want to learn more about the most valuable company in the USA.

You can listen to the speech at the Apple site

You can read a postscript on a Fortune tech blog

I'll give you my top 3 quotes:

The iPad crossing the 55 million sold mark within 2 years:

It took us 22 years to sell 55 million Macs. It took us about 5 years to sell 22 million iPods, and it took us about 3 years to sell that many iPhones

On educating employees

We provide free classes in many of the locations in our supply chain, and we partner with local colleges to provide courses like English, and entrepreneurship, and computer skills, and the like.

More than 60,000 employees have attended these classes, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. If you could take all of these employees and move them to one location, it would be a campus population larger than Arizona State, which is the largest public university in the United States.

Many of these workers go on to earn associate's degrees. So this is a very powerful stepping stone for people looking to advance their careers and their lives.

On competing on price:

Price is rarely the most important thing. A cheap product might sell some units and somebody may get it home and you know, they feel great when they pay from their wallets, but then they get it home and use it, and the joy is gone. And the joy is gone every day that they use it and that's why they're not using it anymore! You don't keep remembering "Oh, I got a good deal," because you hate it!

These 3 points do reflect for me enormously the culture of Apple. They are the most popular brand in the world with for many people expensive products.

Great to hear as well that Tim Cook takes his own line in representing the company and keeping up the good work.

If you have a moment to spare, for you sure you should read the article or listen to it.

Usability and Site Review of the Four Seasons Website

Usability and Site Review of the Four Seasons website

And there we go, the first thorough usability and site review from the Four Seasons 18 million website.

The tell all quote:

As UX expert Tom Stewart commented "despite the umpteen millions it cost, it still appears to have been designed by a photographer (they are stunning) and a computer programmer".

18 Million dollar for a website

Four Seasons got a lot of buzz last week with the announcement of their new website. As announced they dropped down 18 Million dollar to have their new website up and running. This is a shitload of money, for a website.. This weekend after I was joking around with a few other people on Twitter I started thinking about it and how it could get to that amount of money.

Let's analyze how they could have "invested" this money.

First up is the design of the Four Seasons website. The design is nice and clean with even responsive design coming in :). This is especially important with about 70% of their costumers using mobile phones and about 60% tablets.

Second I really hope that they've tagged the shit out of the website. So they can find every little error and UX error and being able to improve upon. With 30 Million visitors this will costs quiet a lot of money as well.

Third the CMS and CRM system behind it. This will have costs the most money to connect the new website with their backend and the backend from all their hotels. Furthermore I suppose the hotels will be having a unique entrance and area where they can upload new information and see what they write about the hotel.

Social Media Integration. The integration is very well done with Tripadvisor, Twitter and Facebook integration. It's one of the nicest designs in the hotel business I've seen.

But now I get to a point I absolutely don't get...

So they recognized the need for mobile adaptations, hence the responsive design.

But where ARE the mobile Apps?

If 70% of their customers are carrying a smart phone and 60% a tablet, you want to be there if they look for apps.

Not only for the booking process but as well the moment they arrive and give the best customer service they could have imagined themselves.

This is the point where they really should have invested and getting the most out of their dollars. I have no idea if they will be launching new apps soon, if yes, I'll certainly check them out.

The conclusion of the Four Seasons story.

While I suppose it was a good investment, a bit overpriced but still a good investment I'm actually surprised with the fact that they've invested in the current and yesterday's way of booking and not for tomorrow's.

I suppose they've done their calculations before they gave the go-ahead, but I think it's gonna be hard with this new website to an extra ROI from this 18 million dollar.

And I think it's a shame that they haven't invested more in their mobile efforts and less in the desktop experience.

Have a look at the this post from econsultancy with some very good comments

Sven de Meyere has a SEO directed write-up on his website (In Dutch)

HDR Panoramic View on Leinsweiler - Germany

HDR Panoramic view on the Leinsweiler village in Germany

We were in Leinsweiler last August (2011) for a wedding and stayed at the local Leinsweiler Hof Hotel.

After suffering a lot of rain during the summer in Holland, we were very pleasantly surprised with the beautiful weather in Germany.

This HDR panoramic picture is from the sunset when we arrived in Leinsweiler and made of 3 different photographs. As usual it´s post-edited with Photomatix and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, soon I´ll share my workflow within these 2 programs.

If you have a chance to visit the area of Leinsweiler, you definitely should do this, not only because of the beautiful surroundings but as well because it´s part of the wine region in Germany. The wine is very nice as well :)

I expect to publish more photographs soon, in the meanwhile enjoy this HDR panoramic photograph :)

Blackberry outages - Great gift to Apple

Blackberry Outages are a great gift to Apple, just with the release of the new iOS5 tomorrow :D Is this one of the last nails in the Blackberry coffin?

Blackberry User revolt on disruptions

Jaap Willem Online Photography & Marketing