Google and Adobe rescue local Flash websites

Well I'll be [...fill in your favorite expression for being shocked and amazed at the same time, mine is...] a monkey's uncle. Which depending on which side of the argument for the Flying Spaghetti Monster you fall, might be true. Apparently Adobe has heard the cries of anguish and of gnashing teeth of the millions of website owners whose sites were invisible to the all powerful Google, whose 3rd commandment was "Those shalt not use Flash (that is, if you want to your site indexed by our search engine)."

Many of you out there have heard my rants on the over-use of Flash in websites built here in Puerto Rico. Well today Adobe announced that they have developed a special Flash application player especially for the major search engines. The new reader will permit the search engines to run a Flash movie as if the search engine were a regular user of the Rich Internet Application (RIA). With the reader the search engines will finally be able to understand what's inside of RIAs and other rich web content created with Adobe Flash technology and add that relevance back to the HTML page.

Both Google and Yahoo worked closely with Adobe engineers to develop the new Flash player, which to be clear is ONLY for the search engines. Except for improved search results, Internet users like you or I will not be affected. According to Ron Adler and Janis Stipins—software engineers on Google's indexing team:

"the new player will better index all of the text that users can see as they interact with a Flash file. If a website contains Flash, the textual content in the Flash files will be used when Google generates a snippet for the website. Also, the words that appear in Flash files will be used to match query terms in Google searches."

Fracking Amazing News for Puerto Rico Websites

This is amazingly fantastic news for the thousands and thousands of local websites which were done with Adobe Flash. Essentially they will immediately begin to show up in search results without having to do anything. So while local website owners benefit immensely from this announcement, it doesn't necessarily mean that websites will automatically start receiving first page search results. Standard search engine optimization will still be necessary to achieve those types of results. In addition, Adobe recommends that sites make use of deep links so that links coming into a site will drive relevance to the specific parts of an application.

While Google has already implemented the new technology, Yahoo (like everything else as recent events indicate) is lagging behind. Adobe promises to extend the benefit of the new technology to other search engines by exploring ways to make it more broadly available.

A taste of PRWeb Tweets

Puerto Rico Web Entrepreneurs Blog

Well, it's not like we didn't know that it was going to be tough when we started DóndeEs.com. Some might have even said, "a web startup in Puerto Rico?" Good luck with that. However, just like a rebellious teenager who disregards all counsel and seems determined to make their own mistakes, we plunged into the world of high-tech entrepreneurialism, ignorant of what we were really starting.

As we near the second anniversary of the launch of the original web site, we, I think, are finally understanding the reality of what we have gotten ourselves into. So it's a pity that we didn't think of this earlier, but we still think it is going to be of value for those who are insane enough to follow.

What did we think of? Well, we decided to start the "Puerto Rico Web Entrepreneurs Blog (PRWeb)." Besides giving us a place to vent our continued frustrations, its purpose is to give other entrepreneurs a "look-inside" our effort to turn our blood, sweat, and tears into a successful web start-up. To the extent we can share what is really happening within the company, we will. Of course, the names will be changed to protect the innocent, or guilty if that's the case.

As I have mentioned before, one of the underlying goals of everything we produce is to prove everyone wrong and become a successful web company. Success can take many forms, there is, of course, financial success, and don't get me wrong we do want that kind of success. However, just as important as financial success, we also want to pave the way for other companies to follow along after us. We want many other web companies to become successful, and not just as life-style businesses, but as true high growth start-ups.

So we started the "Puerto Rico Web Entrepreneurs Blog" to pass along the hard won lessons we had to suffer through, with the hopes that others won't have to face the same problems.

We did one thing a little different with this blog. We are using a new service called Twitter, which is all the rage on the rest of the Internet. If you haven't heard about, it's being called the next greatest thing (we've heard that one before right?). Anyway it's a micro-blogging site that not only allows publishing using RSS, but if you want to, you can follow along through text messaging. To learn more about Twitter, or subscribe to the RSS you can visit my Twitter home page here. You can also sign-up with Twitter (it's free) and start receiving PRWeb through your cellular phone.

Since it's RSS we are republishing PRWeb here on Dondequiera, it's in the middle column, just after the links section. It's also available through the DondeEs.com Faebook Page in the Blog RSS Feed Reader application.

We dedicate PRWeb to all web entrepreneurs today, and those that will follow. Stop. Learn. Ask. Think. Share Ideas. Enjoy!

Flickr Creative Commons Contributor: Randy Son Of Robert

Word of Mouth Marketing Roadmap

For many in the marketing community, the new road that is being blazed by the likes of YouTube, Flickr, Blogger, and most importantly the social networks (MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, etc) ventures into foreign territory. This new road doesn't follow the familiar routes that traditional marketing has taken for the last 50 years. No sir-ree, this new road has most "traditional" marketers feeling very uncomfortable and out of place; which is not a place that no anyone that is supposed to understand how to reach consumers should be.

Word of Mouth Marketing Roadmap

Well I ran across an article that I think lays out a new road map. A road map to understand how to successfully pierce the fog of confusion surrounding this new road, but without getting lost. As most people, traditional marketers, are hesitant to stop and ask for directions (help) from explorers (entrepreneurs) who are unafraid of driving around on this new road until they find their way, no, old-school marketers would rather just wish that the new road didn't exist in the first place. Unfortunately for them, this road continues under construction as daily tens of millions convert it from a two lane country road into a 8 lane super highway.

Entitled the "The Microfame Game," this article from Rex Sorgatz of the New York Magazine describes an eight step road map to micro-fame. And while micro-fame is certanaly not the goal of most marketers, the same essential steps are involved in getting your brand, product, service noticed. And while I'm just a starving high-tech entrepreneur and not really understand or believe in traditional marketing, in these days of mass-marketing over-saturation, I do know that getting noticed is the goal of marketing in this new territory.

The article is extremely well researched and gives you plenty of examples to study and imitate. As I've said earlier in this blog, YouTube plays a signficant role in this new road-map and any marketerer who chooses to ignore this new channel will do so at their own peril.

Well I'll leave you to start your analysis of these new steps, and a little word to the wise, don't be like the proverbial alpha-male who refuses to ask for direction when lost in the country, find an intrepid explorer (entrepreneur) of this new road as a guide. You'll get where you want to be a lot faster and you'll please your clients in the process.

8 STEPS TO MICROFAME

1. Self-publish
2. Stylize
3. Overshare
4. Respond
5. Ally
6. Diversify
7. Create Controversy
8. Persist

Flickr Creative Commons Contributor: twenty_questions

Firefox 3 Released, So Let's Party

This week marked the release of the next version of Mozilla's insanely popular Firefox browser. To commemorate the historic event, Mozilla organized a Guinness World Record attempt. The goal was to have 8 million people download the new release within a 24 hour period.

While the servers they were using to host the downloads burned white hot, and the downloads sputtered, they were able to reach their goal. I should know I was there when it happened. Your's truly, was one of the lucky 8 million to download Firefox 3 first, and here's my certificate to prove it.

If you're not using Firefox, you should. It's really the only way to browse the Internet. If you're still using Firefox 2.x, then I'd definitely recommend upgrading as soon as possible. The touted memory management and speed improvements seem to be working. Ever since installing Firefox 3, I'd say my browsing is a little more snappy.

Nobox Firefox 3 Victory Party

And as if just having Firefox 3 installed and improving my browsing already wasn't enough, I just learned that NoBox Marketing Group is hosting a Firefox 3 Victory Party tomorrow, Saturday 21st. The party has an open invitation, so if you love Firefox as much as dear old Don Dees does, then I guess I'll be seeing you there. The Mozilla Party website has more details on the NoBox gig, so head over there to get the time and location of the party.

I'd recommend also checking out NoBox's news section on their website to get some inside information about the party. It's pretty cool that little old NoBox from Puerto Rico provides such fantastic work to one of the icons in Open Source Software and the Internet. We wish them continued success, especially their recent expansion to Miami.

Growing Impatience Changing Search Behavior

I hope that by now, the importance of search engine optimization is starting to sink in. (Or for those of you out there, who despise the apparent random combination of verbs and adverbs we in the tech community use, getting your web site to appear at the top of search results.) And it seems obvious why that you would want your web site to appear as high in the search results as possible, but just how important is it? Well, Don Don is going to tell you how important...

According to a study conducted by Jupiter Research in April 2008, the number of users who looked at only the first few results or the first page of search engine results increased between 2002 and 2008, while those looking at the second, third or further pages reduced in number.

In the study the researchers found that over 40% of searchers limited themselves to only the first page of search results (the first ten results). Further, the study also found that over 25% of the searchers only looked at the first few results, or what the industry calls the results displayed "above the fold".

The "above the fold" term is a carry over from newspapers, it referred to the news and headlines that were included at the top of the first page and still visible if the newspaper was folded in half. On the Internet, the term applies to the top portion of the page that is displayed when the web page first appears without having to scroll down. In Google, this usually means the first five or maybe six search results.

The study also reports that the number of searchers that try a new query after only viewing the first page of results has increased from 14% in 2002 to 26% in 2008. Which correlates to a continuing decline in the number of searchers looking at the second or third page of results. The searchers looking at the first two pages of search results fell from nearly 25% of all searchers to just over 15%. In addition, the percentage of searchers looking at the first three pages fell from around 10% to almost 5%

Conclusion

As the Internet evolves, search engines continue to grow in importance, but according to Jupiter Research searchers are growing more impatient. This matches up exactly with what I spoke of earlier, the conclusion of Dr. Jakob Nielson, who said: "Now, when people go online they know what they want and how to do it."

This study points to two possible options for web site owners who want to aim for the highest search results possible. The first alternative is to work diligently on your web site to make it appealing to search engines (readable by search engines, focus, frequently updated, and well linked to) or what the industry refers to as improving your organic search result (search engine optimization). The other option is to jump on the search engine marketing bandwagon and pay for keyword advertising on the major search engines. That's it! Without either of these two options, the chances of someone finding your company or your products, is small, and getting smaller every day.

Flickr Creative Commons Contributor: rileyroxx

You Asked For It: DóndeEs.com - Agrandado

When we switched to the new design last month, a few of our loyal users were sad to see the old interface disappear. We were a little sad as well, so when we received a few messages complaining we thought, uh-oh, what do we do now? We were committed to the new design, so in true entrepreneurial fashion, we gave them what they asked for. Well sort of...we did the best we could do.

Mapa Agrandado

So, as promised, we've been able to resurrect the old interface, and today we are officially launching the new (old) interface. The old interface has been brought back to life as Mapa Agrandado and is available from the home page under the "Herramientas" section.

For those of you not familiar with the old interface, it featured a super-sized map, and a geographical directory. So not only could you browse our Visual Directory® by category, but you could browse the map by region (North, South, East, West, and Central) and then by municipality. So if you're looking to browse a specific city in Puerto Rico, the Mapa Agrandado is probably the way you want to go. It puts all of the locations for a city right at your finger tips.

New and Improved, With Better Taste

But you know Jose, he couldn't just launch what we had before. He had to play with his new toy, the Google Earth API. I know you're like, seriously, you geeks are just too much. What with the acronyms and freaky names for things, it's no wonder no one understands what you're talking about. Stay with me here, I can see your eyes glazing over, I'm almost to the pay-off.

So not only have we brought back the old map interface, but we've improved the map in order to give you another way to explore Puerto Rico, beyond the cities, beyond the shore, well any where the satellites in the sky can penetrate. Now you can choose between the standard map, hybrid satellite, and earth (which is the new Google Earth) versions.

Yes, now for the first time, the insanely popular Google Earth is available through the Web, and DóndeEs.com is the first company in Puerto Rico to use the new Google Earth API, which was just announced to the world last May 28th.

First Puerto Rico Map Using Google Earth Plug-in

One little notice though, in order to use the new Google Earth API, you'll have to install the Google Earth Plug-in, but it is simple to install and takes place all through the browser. For those of you who've never been able to install Google Earth and were annoyed by your friends when they gushed on about how cool it was, well now you too can waste hours zooming around Puerto Rico.

To cut to the chase, what we are talking about is a three dimensional map of Puerto Rico. And since the map is now available in 3D, the map now has an additional control. Now as well as controlling the location and the zoom level, you can also control the tilt of the camera position (your perspective).

We've been able to seamlessly integrate the new Google Earth API, so switching between the old maps and the new 3D map is only a click away. Once you navigate to a municipality, click on the Earth button and you'll be ready to start zooming.

Just tilt the map a little bit and click on the zoom control, and away you go. And you thought the gasoline crisis was going to keep you from exploring Puerto Rico this summer. Now thanks to Jose and DóndeEs.com, the farthest reaches of Puerto Rico are just a few clicks away; just don't let your supervisor catch you zooming, we wouldn't want them to block you from all the sweet taste of DóndeEs.com.

Ten Rules for Web Startups

After selling Pyra (Blogger) to Google, Evan Williams has went on to found Odeo, which was kind of a bust, and Twitter, which is storming all over the web. Never heard of Twitter? Well that's cool, I'm sure it's not for everyone, but if you have, tell me what you think, leave a comment if you're already using it and let me know what you think. I'm trying to figure out if there is any life for Twitter in Puerto Rico.

Anyway, after selling Pyra and eventually leaving Google, Evan penned these ten rules, which I've greatly shortened, so I recommend reading all he has to say about them. I share them here for two reasons. First, for the most part, we're trying to follow as many of them as possible. So you'll understand a little more about where we are coming from. But second, also because I still fundamentally believe that we need to grow the web start-up industry in Puerto Rico. I believe that it can provide a significant boost to the Puerto Rico economy. And, in my opinion, if more new Puerto Rico web companies followed these rules we would have more success stories than we do.

Ten Rules for Web Startups

#1: Be Narrow
Focus on the smallest possible problem you could solve that would potentially be useful.

#2: Be Different
There are lots of people thinking about—and probably working on—the same thing you are. So pick a catchy name for your business, specialize (see #1), and accept that that no sufficiently interesting space will be limited to one player.

#3: Be Casual
If you want to hit the really big home runs, create services that fit in with—and, indeed, help—people's everyday lives without requiring lots of commitment or identity change.

#4: Be Picky
Another perennial business rule, and it applies to everything you do: features, employees, investors, partners, press opportunities.

#5: Be User-Centric
User experience is everything.

#6: Be Self-Centered
Great products almost always come from someone scratching their own itch. Create something you want to exist in the world.

#7: Be Greedy
Design something to charge for into your product and start taking money within 6 months

#8: Be Tiny
Keep your valuation as low as possible, because it doesn't cost much to start something anymore (especially if you keep the scope narrow, again see #1).

#9: Be Agile
Many web companies that die could have eventually been successful had they been able to adjust and change their plans.

#10: Be Balanced
Nature requires balance for health—as do the bodies and minds who work for you and, without which, your company will be worthless.

Many Thanks To Our (Celebrity) Flickr Creative Commons Contributor Today: Joi

Review: New Medalla Light Website

Wow, has it been THAT long. Late last year, I started a new category called websites. And I really had more intention to do this on a regular basis, but oops, you know, about a million other things have been filling my head, and it got lost in the clutter.

Back in September, I took a look at the Puerto Rico Coors Light web site, if you haven't seen it, take a look first, then you'll know what to expect from this review. And it sort of seems fitting that I'm going to pick this up, sort of where I left on the last one.

MedallaLight.com

A couple of weeks back I checked on last year's winner of the WebAd Awards, and to my surprise, the sight had been replaced by an under construction page. First of all, why do that? Put a teaser on the old site that something new is coming, but for me, a page under construction or site under construction is just pointless.

Anyway, so recently, Medalla Light announced that their new site was up and ready to provide a new level of interactivity. So I decided to head over there and check it out. First of all, let me congratulate Medalla and the designers of their new site Sajo, Garcia, & Partners along with Contactiva Interactive on one thing they have done that is VERY cool. They have broken out of the Adobe Flash paradigm. While the new site does use Flash, it is only to provide some movement to the site, but besides that they are using HTML, Javascript, and CSS. I really mean this, it is important that Puerto Rico Ad agencies and designers move away from Flash and it takes a bold decision to break out of the generic "do as everyone else does" pack.

While viewing the source to the site, however, they may want to evaluate their usage of Javascript, for while it does give a web page more interactivity, it can also slow it down. At times it seems that the new site is a little slow. This might be due to my connection, general Internet congestion, or a symptom of too much Javacript to execute. It's difficult to tell, but I think a little tweaking might be in-store to fine-tine the performance of the site.

The Medalla Light Brand

I think it's also courageous and bold to discard a winner. I thought the old site was very well done, and served their brand very effectively. So I'm not sure what they had as goals for the new site design, but I believe as the announcement I saw, they were hoping to build a platform which engaged their community more. I can't really remember if the old site had any of the functionality I see on the new site, but I do see some cool features.

From joining their community, to sending a link to a friend, to checking out their Facebook group, the new site does have many points for the visitor to interact. I tried out a few of the features and everything seemed to work. A couple of minor picky things. When inviting a friend to see a picture or to invite them to an event, the form doesn't give any feedback (other than clearing the form) that the form was submitted successfully. Perhaps they should use the same code they use on the registration form to simply tell the visitor that the message was sent.

Another suggestion I would make, is for them to customize the emails the page sends out. The message you receive from the system is generic, it should indicate that this is a picture, an event, a whatever. Although the link it provides is to the right content you want to share, the message itself is the same. Also, it doesn't include the name of the person who sent them the message. People are more likely to open a link that kind of looks like spam, if it includes the name and a message from someone they recognize.

Technology

Once again, kudos for not using Flash, but their push for innovation didn't stop there. Of course, they have an embedded music player supplying the bumping sounds. They also have a video section, and two new technologies: RSS and Facebook.

I could be wrong, but I'm not, but there might be a problem with the video section. Either that or the menu link is malfunctioning, because I never could pull up the video section. In addition,, unless the home page is the video section, the videos embedded in the home page are very slow.

While I can definitely understand wanting to be consistent with the branding, I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to upload the videos to YouTube and embed them in the web site from there. Of course, they should already be on YouTube, if you ask me. The logic goes something like this, if you're not in the video hosting business, why host your own videos? Many business experts recommend outsourcing everything that is not your specialty, and in this case I think video hosting applies.

The site now has a news feed, I guess sort of like a blog. Two comments, first, in order to need a feed you have to produce content. The site, so far, is a little light on news. Second, a headline does not make it news. Each news entry should have a little meat on it. Besides that I think it's a nice addition. Time will tell whether they deliver on making the RSS feed valuable enough to want to subscribe to it.

Finally, in the community section they have a link to their Facebook group. Checking out the group it looks like they have a nice little community started. It also seems to be well synchronized to their home page. One dilemma most businesses are facing these days is the typical build or buy (use) challenge. In this case, why build a community on the website, if you've already got one going in Facebook?

Of course, in order to capitalize on the community in Facebook, might require a custom built Facebook application. But of course, they would need a software development company with experience in building those applications. Hint, hint! Leave us a comment if you would like DóndeEs.com to help you build that Facebook application. Oh did I forget to mention that DóndeEs.com is the only software development company in Puerto Rico that has already developed and implemented a Facebook application?

Search Engines Rule The Web

One of the original voices in the wilderness clamoring for simpler web pages, smaller or no images, and improved usability was Dr. Jakob Nielson. His book, "Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity" is the number-one best-selling book ever about user interfaces, with more than a quarter million copies in print in 22 languages.

Recently he discussed the latest report on web habits with the BBC News. In the story he makes clear what we've been trying to tell anyone who will listen: "Basically, search engines rule the web."

Initial Search Engine Usage Rises

According to the story, in 2004, when starting an Internet session, 60% of people conducted a search first and then used a deep link that took them directly to a page or destination inside a site. In 2008, said Dr. Nielsen, that percentage has risen to 75%. Let me try stating that just a little bit clearer: Today, the first thing 3 out of 4 people do when using the Internet is complete a search.

Dr. Nielson believes that people are becoming much less patient when they go online. Instead of lingering on websites, many users want to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave. According to Nielson: "Now, when people go online they know what they want and how to do it."

Conclusion

If you're not on the supermarket shelf, you won't sell any products. That's the metaphor we've been drilling home to people. The Internet is a supermarket, so if 75% find what they want in the supermarket by using a search, and if your company, product, or service doesn't show up on the first page of search results in the three major search engines, then your company, product, or service doesn't exist.

Dr. Nielson's perspective on what the web should look like.

Univision Doesn't Get YouTube

Recently the keynote speaker for the 2008 SME Internet Forum, Alfonso Luna, Director of Marketing for Latin American Division of Google, went to great efforts to illustrate how powerful YouTube was as a marketing tool, literally unmatched by any other tool on the Internet. How right he is. Check out this review I wrote about the event.

Number of Online Videos Viewed in the U.S. Jumps 13% Percent in March to 11.5 Billion

According to the most recent report by comScore Video Metrix, the number of videos watched on YouTube is nearly the triple the rest of the top ten sites combined. 38% of all videos watched during March 2008 are hosted on YouTube, that brings the total videos watched in one month to 4,358,306.

Univision announces video on demand offering

So while Univision does recognize that video over the Internet is a big deal, they are both late to the party, and second misguided. They are hoping that by launching, as they claim, "the most extensive library of Spanish-language content in the U.S.", they are hoping to siphon off some of the YouTube traffic to Univision.com.

I see this time and time again. Instead of going were the momentum is, they want to swim against the current and try to get the Internet community to stop using YouTube. Unless, that is, they basically duplicate their efforts and create a Univsion channel on YouTube and publish all of their content their as well, which is what I would do. In addition, they need to come out with a very sophisticated solution. One which integrates effortlessly with MySpace and FaceBook, because if they don't, it's not going to be very pretty when the project manager tries to explain why the number of video views for the new service isn't rising as they expected.

Internet Advertising Revenues top $21B in ’07.

Once upon a time, two starry eyed dreamers participated in a business plan contest. They did their homework, they found the pain, they created a solution, and they really believed they were on to something. However, in the end, they lost. After not even making the finals of the contest they discussed their business with the guru, the director of the contest, and they asked why they lost. After some discussion, the guru said point blank, I don't think Internet advertising has arrived yet. Now of course, if he was speaking about Puerto Rico, then he was absolutely right. But if was speaking about the Internet in general, which is how the two dreamers took it, then he is, of course, dead wrong.

Recently, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) announced that the 2007 Internet Advertising Revenue Report shows Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. continued their upward climb. Here are some highlights from that report:

• For the full year 2007, revenues totaled $21.2 billion, exceeding 2006 performance by 26 %, itself the former record year.
• Q4 2007 Internet advertising revenues hit $5.9 billion, representing historic revenues for a single quarter and a 24% increase over the same period in 2006.
• This is the fourth consecutive year and 13th consecutive quarter of record results.

Inflalandia - Case Study Update

For those of you starting with this post, this is a continuation of a couple of posts I did last week. While the initial post about the upcoming Inflalandia event at the Puerto Rico Convention Center was informative in nature, the second proposed a test. The test was to see how well Dondequiera would do in the search engines for the the term Inflalandia once the post had been indexed by the search robots and spiders. If you want to catch up, check for those posts here and here.

Google Results for Inflalandia

The preliminary results are in, and we were successfully able to jump up onto the first page of search results for Inflalandia on Google. However, we aren't number 1. We're showing up at positions nine and ten. Which in terms of search engine optimization to go from zero to the first page of search results in a matter of days is golden, but it could be better.

Yahoo Results for Inflalandia

I'm even happier to report that on Yahoo search, we rock. Yep, we are the champions, we are the champions, no time for losers, because we have the top search results when searching for Inflalandia.

Microsoft Live Results for Inflalandia

We're also number one over at Microsoft's Live search, although, I'm not too happy about the links they provide for the results. I'll have to confess here that since Google reportedly receives about 70% of all searches we tend to focus on them, so there may be some tweaking we have to do to get better URLs associated with the Live search results.

All in all, I'd say that this case study proves my point. When we blog, the search engines listen and consistently rank our pages very high when using their magic secret sauce search ranking algorithms. Conclusion: we have a high probability of delivering Internet searchers to content appearing in this blog.

Psst! This little blog post is another attempt to increase our results on Google. But don't tell anyone... But seriously, later this week I'll share with you other bloggers some of the things we've done to achieve these results. And I promise I won't mention Inflalandia.

Inflalandia - A Case Study

Recently when I was doing some research for the SME Puerto Rico Internet Forum, I discovered that if you searched for "Puerto Rico Internet Forum", Dondequiera was the number one result. Now this is nothing unusual, as it has happened with other blog posts in the past. In fact, most of the stuff we blog about ends up doing pretty well in Google searches. You're like so what, right? Well hang in there I'll tell you what!

Now this is something that we consistently tell people, but we mostly get a lot of shaking heads saying yes, yes, yes we get it. But for me, they don't really get it, otherwise more exciting things would be happening for not only us but for Internet innovation in Puerto Rico and more importantly more companies would be changing the way they use the Internet for marketing. That is, if they really go it. You get it?

Really, really, why is this important?

So let's be blunt here, to drive this point home. The SME just hosted an event which I'm sure they spent quite a lot of money to promote, but when searching for the title of the event in Google, Dondequiera is the number one result. We even place higher than the SME Internet Committee web site for the event, the official site for the event!

And it's not like there isn't information out there on the event. Here are a few I found from sites which supposedly have more traffic than us:

• "Sofisticado el cibernauta boricua" (Primera Hora)
• "Internet a velocidad ‘moderada’" (Vocero)
• SME presenta PR Internet Forum (Vocero)
• Más boricuas conectados a la Red (El Nuevo Dia)
• Imparable la ola de la transformación (El Nuevo Dia)
• SME to present Puerto Rico Internet Forum 2008 and 3rd annual report on local users’ behavior online (Caribbean Business)

My point is this, after seeing the web sites that were nominated for the Internet integration WebAd Awards (Best Internet Integration on a 360° campaign, Best integration of the Internet in a public relations or non-profit campaign, Best integration of the Internet in a promotional campaign), shouldn't more companies be talking to us? If we can consistently deliver top search results for their campaigns, I would think that they would want DóndeEs.com to be part of their next campaign involving Internet integration.

The Test

So this morning when I was researching the Inflalandia event, I decided that I would put this concept to the test. I've captured the results in the image below of a Google search for "Inflalandia", now I'll be monitoring the same search over the next couple of days to see if DóndeEs.com becomes the number one result. I like this test because the name of the event is already in Spanish (I was afraid that a translation of the Internet Forum would dilute results), so it won't be translated. On the other hand, I think it will be rather easy for us to be the first results because none of the larger web sites will provide any coverage of the event before hand. That is, not unless it is in the form of an advertisement.

Which makes me think, one down side to advertising in print mediums is that the ads are not usually posted on-line. While an article in the newspaper may find it's way onto the Internet, companies usually don't pay to have those ads posted online too. And if they did, they would be in the form of a Flash movie or image, which wouldn't be indexed by the search engines anyway.

Google Search Results for Inflalandia - Before (May 16,2008 at 8:00 a.m.)












So now all we have to do is wait for the robots and spiders to come...

Flickr Creative Commons Contributor Today: scragz

Review: SME Puerto Rico Internet Forum

As I mentioned, yesterday we launched the new website design for DóndeEs.com. We chose yesterday as the launch date to coincide with our sponsorship of the 8th Sales and Marketing Executive Association Puerto Rico Internet Forum. Now that I've got a little bit of sleep, I wanted to share with everyone how the event went.

Well, first, working at a booth during a conference always gives you a little different experience than sitting in the audience, but one thing which is a little different than many other conferences, the Internet Forum is organized so that the booths are in the same room as the speakers, so at least we got to hear the presentations, even if it was far off to one side.

As far as local technology conferences, I'd have to say that the Internet Forum is one of the more popular ones. Yesterday was no exception. This was my second forum and I'd have to say that this year the ballroom was more packed than the year before. Of course, this might have been because of the expansion of the WebAd Awards. With more awards that meant that more nominees were in the audience. So one wonders how many in the audience would not have been there had they not been nominated.

The event kicked off with an overview presentation of the the most recent study Puerto Rico Internet Pulse 2008. While the presentation contained very valuable insight and statistics, most experts agree that after about the third or fourth slide of statistics, audience attention levels tend to drop drastically. For my taste, I would prefer someone, well as long as they are qualified (which really limits the field of possibilities), to summarize the results into talking points. They should explain why some conclusion from the results is important, provide the backup statistics and move on to the next conclusion. Also providing hard copies of the press release can be a very successful strategy for making a presentation more enjoyable. However, since the SME sells copies of the Puerto Rico Internet Pulse, I guess that's not an option. They could generate a press release like many other leading research firms. Anyway, if you'd like to purchase a copy, contact the SME at (787) 764-8595 or by visiting their web site.

The next speaker was Rafael Matos, a Professor of Multimedia Technology from Universidad del Sagrado Corazón. I guess Professor Matos was giving the Luddite version of his speech, because he went with the no PowerPoint slide show approach. I guess after he described the Internet as a library that had been hit by a hurricane, I sort of tuned out. He droned on for a while longer and my thoughts drifted to what still needed to be be tweaked on the website. Meanwhile Jose continued to listen and shared with me that he felt that the presentation Professor Matos was giving was for the wrong audience. Don't get me wrong, I've seen some incredible speeches made with out a slide presentation, but there are very few speakers that can pull it off.

After a short break, where we gave away quite a few brochures and did a few demonstrations, the show resumed with the WebAd Awards. I won't go into the who won what, for that you can hit the SME Internet Committee web site for a complete list of the winners. I will share two comments. First for some strange reason very few of the winners were willing to go up on stage to receive their awards. It made the whole award presentation seem even more awkward than when we had to give demonstrations to attendees associated with competing web sites. A newcomer to the Puerto Rico Internet community who was attending the Internet Forum for the first time commented to me that they couldn't believe which web sites had won. This newcomer thought the web sites looked like interactive magazine advertisements; like they were from some historical archive from the web, like from the year 2000. I'm gratified to hear a complete outsider confirm everything I've been saying for years, but I'm saddened anyway.

The highlight of the event, by far, was the presentation by Alfonso Luna, Director of Marketing for Latin American Division of Google. Resembling a presentation I gave last year to the Asociación de Pequeñas y Medianas Empresas (ASOPYMES), Luna told the audience how marketing has changed, and that there were new forces at work changing consumer behaviors. For me the highlight of the presentation was a slide that I'm sure sent cold chills down the spine of everyone in attendance from El Nuevo Dia. To summarize, essentially, the slide first showed the average number of hours being spent with various mediums (television, Internet, radio, newspaper, etc.). Leading this list was television with 19 hours, second was Internet (but not for long...) with 17 hours, third was I believe radio, and near the bottom of the list was newspaper with 2 hours. Then he showed the division of advertising dollars to those various mediums. Television was first with something like 36%, Internet had less than 1%, and I believe newspaper had 24%. Bottom line, as I've said before, I'll agree with Professor Matos, a hurricane is coming. But it's going to be a shit storm and it's going to be hitting everyone's fans who do not awaken to the reality of the Internet and the explosion of advertising that is about to happen. Of course Luna went on to tell everyone how important Google Adwords are to address this coming storm. I would have preferred if Luna would have pushed Google products less and the more generalized search engine marketing.

Will his presentation have any impact on the collection of marketing executives in the audience? Well I'll be honest, I'm skeptical. I guess the first indicator will be if we start to see more ads appearing in the Google AdSense program. But I think more telling is if we see any changes in the WebAd Awards next year. None of the websites nominated for either of the integrated campaign WebAd Awards even mentioned search engine marketing as part of their campaigns. So if Google Ads are listed as part of next year's nominations, I'll know that Luna made an impact.

Another interesting moment was when Luna asked the crowd how many people in the audience had read the "The Long Tail" by Chris Anderson. Only one person raised their hand. Chilling... While I haven't finished the book, I did read the original Wired article. By the way, Luna also mentioned "The Wisdom of Crowds" by James Surowiecki and "Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything" by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams as the books to read this year.

Finally, I'd like to mention how impressed I am with the Puerto Rico Convention Center. It is truly a magnificent facility that will only grow in value and importance. When the hotel and shopping facilities are finished, the construction will make the Puerto Rico Convention Center the crown jewel in the Puerto Rico Tourism industry. I'm also really pleased with the maintenance of the facility by the SMG Team. They keep it looking fresh and new.

In summary, I believe that the event is good, but could stand for a lot of improvements. First, as a sponsor there isn't enough time to network and tell participants about your product. Second, I think the event should be longer, which would provide more time for the audience to visit exhibitors. I'd also like to see some additional high caliber speakers. It would also be interesting to offer some tutorials or hands-on workshops to drive home some of the key concepts to participants. One session which is always popular at the Web 2.0 conference is a panel discussion with teens. If marketers were able to hear first hand how important the Internet was to this demographic, they might begin to see the light. Well, you know what I always say about monkeys....

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Is Liberty Cablevision throttling Bit Torrent?

Today I came across a test to see whether an Internet Service Provider (ISP) was throttling Bit Torrent traffic. I thought it would be interesting to test my own ISP and then share this new resource to see if others in Puerto Rico could test their own ISP.

Note: If the preceding paragraph makes no sense to you, if it sounds like techno-babble or gobbly-gook, then I give you my permission to skip this blog post and move onto the next one.

Okay, I assume that if you're still here, then I assume you're already downloading using the Bit Torrent technology. Let's first give some background. Over the past year or so, Internet advocates started learning about efforts by the ISP community to limit or block traffic related to Bit Torrent downloads. The logic given to justify these efforts was that the traffic demands of Bit Torrent downloaders was overwhelming networks and starting to impact ordinary ISP users.

Of course, most Internet aficionados cried foul. The ISP's however, folded these efforts and their defense into the whole debate about network neutrality. What ISP's want and network neutrality is attempting to fight is that some traffic, like downloads and videos, are so network intensive, that the providers of that content should pay more to use the network, as opposed to a "normal" site. Network neutrality claims that all traffic is equal, regardless of the demands it places on the network.

Test Results

So after finally getting through to the test server, I was able to successfully test my ISP, Liberty Cablevision. A quick note on the test site. The site is very, very busy. So be patient. Well, I'm sad to say, but according to my results, it appears that Liberty is constraining Bit Torrent traffic. While the test indicated that Liberty was not impacting the seeding process, it did appear that they were limiting the download rate on the standard Bit Torrent port. Here is a cut and past from the test results:

Is TCP traffic on a well-known BitTorrent port (6881) throttled?

Your ISP possibly rate limits all downloads at port 6881. In our test, a TCP download on a BitTorrent port achieved at least 1 Kbps while a TCP download on a non-BitTorrent port achieved at least 15 Kbps.

Note that it is hard to detect rate limiting and that there are many explanations why a transfer can observe lower throughput than another transfer. We run the BitTorrent and TCP transfer back-to-back and at least two times to add more confidence to our measurements.

What I'd like to ask is if there are any Dondequiera readers out there who are familiar with Bit Torrent and use another ISP besides Liberty, could you please test your ISP and post the results in the comments? If we can get results from all of the ISPs, then we'll have a better idea of where local ISPs stand in respect to network neutrality. Thanks in advance in helping defend Internet freedom.

7ma SME - Puerto Rico Internet Forum

Man, I've been staring hard at monitor this morning, trying to solve the mysteries of margins, paddings, divs, and classes, so before I get a pounding headache let me tell you about the 7th annual Puerto Rico Internet Forum being held next week at the Puerto Rico Convention Center.

With an expanded Web Awards program, the forum will also feature important speakers and more important than anything sponsorship from your favorite blog and local search web site, DóndeEs.com. We're looking forward to participate in the forum where we will have an exciting announcement. For sure, check back next Wednesday May 14th for that special announcement, but until then, thanks for your attention.

The forum will kick-off at 8:30 a.m., The speakers for the forum are Ing. Alfonso Luna, Marketing Director, Latin America, Google Inc. who will speak on "The New Paradigms of Marketing" and Prof. Rafael Matos from Universidad del Sagrado Corazón will speak on how we can make "Puerto Rico can use technology as a corporate tool". Following the speakers, the SME will present an update to the SME Internet Study and then present the 2008 Web Ad Awards. The forum is schedule to conclude at 12:00 noon. Admission is $65.00+IVU for SME members, $100.00+IVU for non-members, and $34.77 for students. The forum will be in Ballroom "A".

WebWare 100 Announced

WebWare.com has announced the third annual, 2008 winners of the best Web 2.0 web applications. Before you check to see if your favorites made the list, I bet your wondering did DóndeEs.com make the list? Well, not this year, but thanks for thinking of us! ;-)

No, I bet you were wondering how they picked the winners. Well they (WebWare editors) first started by whittling down a list of 5000 qualifying nomininees to a more manageable size of 300 finalists. They then opened the list of finalists for voting from the WebWare.com website. Over 1.9 million votes were cast for the 300 finalists this year. So ultimately, the Internet community, or at least the Webware community picked the winners.

The winners were chosen amongst ten different categories. And each category awarded ten top vote getters. I won't repeat all of the categories and winners, but I will share some of the top overall vote getters. If you're curious, they have a nice page with all 100 winners listed. It makes for a quick browse.

Just slightly more than half of all the votes cast in the Webware 100 went to the top 10 vote-getters. Six of these top 10 are no surprise at all: Facebook, Firefox, Google, iTunes, MySpace, and YouTube. But the other four may not be as familiar: DeviantArt, Friendster, Gaia Online, and Maxthon.

I did a little inventory of the applications. Of the 100, I recognized 60 easily. And of those 60, I can claim to use on a regular basis 28. How about you? Of the 40 I didn't recognize or had never heard of, there were only two that I can honestly say pose any interest to me at all: blogtalkradio.com and voicethread.com. These two hold interest for us because we'd like to add more audio/visual content to DóndeEs.com, especially in the area of helping everyone get the most out of our web application.

In case you've never heard of WebWare.com, it is a blog (site) where computer users can learn about new and useful Web applications. Webware.com was coded, and is hosted by, CNET.

Safer Internet Day 12 February 2008

Liberty Cablevision recently announced that they would be helping to sponsor and promote "Safer Internet Day". The program, which aims to increase awareness about the importance of Internet safety and to also inform the public about the risks possible by unnecessarily exposing personal information (especially about children) on the Internet. The campaign hopes to help people better recognize and eliminate dangerous activities while using the Internet.

As I mentioned yesterday, if Liberty Cablevision is running some type of campaign, I haven't seen or heard anything locally. I caught wind of this through one of my many feeds otherwise I would have missed it all together. I commend Liberty for picking up this cause, but I criticize them for not working harder (think NFL.com) to make the marketing material they paid for available over the Internet. I'm sure I'm not the only person here who doesn't watch local television and rarely listens to the radio (okay maybe I am, sigh). So if they want to connect with me, they had better re-use their ads on the Internet. And no thank you, I don't want to read what you think about the issue. I mean who wants to read these days? Gimme video baby.......

Safer Internet Day, which is February 12th, is an international event to promote Internet safety all over the world. The organization behind the social awareness day has an informative web site available to support the event. I would recommend for any parent or teenager wanting to know more about Internet safety to visit the frequently asked question (FAQ) page to learn more about the risks associated with popular activities such as blogging, social networks, and chatting. The site and the awareness event are all brought to us by Insafe, a network of national nodes that coordinate Internet safety awareness in Europe.

In general insafe promotes empowerment. As with anything, empowered with knowledge and understanding one can do a lot to protect oneself. What can you do to get the very best out of internet and avoid the pitfalls? Firstly, never give away any private information – don’t tell anyone anything that could help them identify or locate you. Protect your data by installing technical filters, anti-spyware and by using the recommended default safety settings on all your online equipment, from modem to mobile. Below is a promotional video for the event: