Susan Krieger

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From zero to 100km/h (62 mph) in just 2.9 seconds sounds very nice. Don't try this at home with your..(more...)

Don’t worry, Google Reader is not going to be replaced, but the Google Reader team did come up with a cool new feature. It’s called Google Reader Play and is an experiment in Google Labs.

Google Reader Play is all about the visual experience. It uses the same technology as recommended items to find content you might be interested in. By indicating when you enjoy a particular item, Google Reader Play will automatically pull up more content like it. Over time, it learns what you like to read and view, and more content will be customized to your taste.

Reader Play brings together content related to items you’ve liked, starred, or shared during a previous visit, but it will also pull up items shared by the people you are following.

Give Google Reader Play a Spin

1. To give Google Reader Play a spin, sign into your Google Reader account.
2. Visit Google Reader Play.
3. Wait for your content to load.
4. Use the Star button to star items for later viewing, the like button  to see more related content.
5. Click on the content link to view the original publication.
6. You can click the TV icon to start a slide show of the content items in Reader Play, and sit back to watch them one by one.
7. Hide the thumbnails at the bottom by clicking the thumbnail icon in the bottom left.

It looks like Reader Play is a quick and fun way to browse content. You can refine what you’re looking at by selecting particular topic categories. The stream settings button (bottom, third from the left) contains a link to ‘choose categories’:

When you click it you can select the topics you are interested in:

Reader Play is still in labs, so as it develops, and perhaps as it gets to know my tastes it will adapt to provide more content. When I tried it out today, the line-up of material for me to view was still not very extensive. Perhaps users with more active Reader accounts will see more material, and I’ll definitely keep using Reader Play to scan new articles.

What do you think of Google Reader Play? Easy way to browse new content, or just another gadget? We’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Gmail problems or confused about Picasa? I’ll help you in the forums.

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Ruim 40 internetbedrijven bereiden een beursgang voor, waaronder bekende ondernemingen als LinkedIn, Facebook en Twitter. Dat stelt Andrew Anker, voormalig topman van Wired en investeerder, op basis van bronnen in de Amerikaanse bankwereld. Lees meer

Google looks to be following up the addition of its Google Chart Tools with a neat addition to Google Labs - the Public Data Explorer.

The purpose of the new tool, Google says on the new lab's page, is to make "large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate".

Sponsor

Just as with the Chart Tools, Google's Public Data Explorer will allow users to directly embed charts and other visual tools onto their websites. The charts will be dynamically created, so if the data updates, so will the chart.

Google first got into the public data game about a year ago and has been including this type of data in its search results.

Right now, there are 13 datasets available, ranging from something as specific as Education Statistics of California to World Development Indicators from the World Bank. Google has just added five new public data sources: the U.S. Center for Disease Control (think Google's Flu Trends), the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Eurostat, the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, and the California Department of Education.

There are four choices for visualization styles - bar graph, line graph, map or bubble, and each has its advantage. After choosing a visual style, you can select what data points you would like to see and set variables such as time period.

Just as with the chart tools, we look forward to seeing how useful a tool like this can be for all those smaller organizations that don't have the resources to hire a full-time web design team, but want to visually display data to help visualize trends. This could be a great tool for smaller journalistic organizations to compete with some of the big dogs.

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Leest over Mirabeau:

Idealize

'Internetbureau NS had proactiever mogen zijn' Idealize Erg belangrijk was dat Funda één van onze eerste klanten was. We hadden goede gesprekken met de directieleden destijds daar, Marque Joosten en Marijn ...

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Wanneer online formulieren, in plaats van de gebruikelijke verticale rij van velden, gepresenteerd worden als een “verhaal formulier”, levert dat een een 25% tot wel 40% hogere conversie op.

Wat is een verhaal formulier?

Waarschijnlijk vraag je je af wat nu precies een “verhalen formulier” is. Vandaar bovenstaand voorbeeld van Owe.to, een site waarmee je eenvoudige leenafspraken kunt vastleggen.

Normaal gesproken bestaat een online formulier uit een reeks velden die onder elkaar geplaatst worden. Voor of bpven die velden staat een label dat aangeeft wat je in moet vullen. Zoals je in bovenstaand voorbeeld ziet gaat dat bij Owe.to anders, deze site gebruikt een verhaal-formulier. De velden worden zo geplaatst dat er met behulp van wat tekst tussendoor een logisch verhaaltje ontstaat:

John Smith is schuldig aan mij, Christ Coolen, 222 euro voor biertjes in de Foobar op vrijdag.

Alle vet-gedrukte woorden zijn invulmomenten (dit zijn dus de formuliervelden).

Verhaal formulier voorbeeld van Huffduffer

Nog een voorbeeld, in dit geval van Huffduffer. Dit is een online dienst waarmee je audio-bestanden kunt delen:

Hier zie je het verhaal element nog duidelijker terugkomen omdat er meer tekst wordt gebruikt tussen de invulmomenten/formuliervelden. Formulierspecialist Luke Wroblewski schrijft over dit voorbeeld:

The form works as you’d expect. You can tab between the “blanks” just the way you tab between standard Web form input fields. You can click on any “blank” to start entering text. The password “blank” masks any characters you enter just like a standard password input, and the whole form manages errors if you answer any questions incorrectly. In other words, it works like a standard Web form but it looks quite different. The presentation is inviting and fun, which is quite unlike a standard Web form.

Kortom: het formulier zit heel natuurlijk in elkaar (alsof je met iemand praat) en de werking ervan is helemaal logisch.

Issues met het design van een verhaalformulier

Als designer of online marketeer loop je echter toch wel tegen wat issues aan wanneer je besluit om een verhaal-formulier in te zetten. Je hebt bijvoorbeeld geen “labels” die aangeven wat er in het formulierveld moet worden ingevuld. Een bezoeker moet dat zelf bedenken op basis van de context. En dat zelf bedenken is eigenlijk tegen de “don’t make me think“-regel van usability-guru Steve Krug…

De designer van Owe.to (van het eerste voorbeeld) heeft dit “geen labels” probleem op een slimme wanneer opgelost. Allereest wordt bij alle invulmomenten in licht grijze tekst het gewenste invul-format weergegeven. Je krijgt dat zoiets als “… and my emailadres is johnsmit@example.com“. Wanneer je begint te typen verdwijnt deze tekst. Maar ook dan word je als bezoeker nog steeds geholpen:

Niet revolutionair misschien, maar toch slim gedaan…

Werken verhaalformulieren beter?

Tot zover de theorie. Nu over naar de praktijk: werken de verhaal-formulieren ook daadwerkelijk beter dan tradionele formulieren?

Toen de eerder genoemde Luke Wroblewski het fenomeen “verhaal-formulier” voor het eerst ontdekte was hij nieuwsgierig hoe deze formulieren zouden presteren ten opzichte van gewone formulieren. Zou het beter werken vanwege het natuurlijke en logische format? Of zouden bezoekers in verwarring raken omdat ze onbekend zijn met deze formulier-stijl?

Hij besloot deze vraag te A/B testen op Vast.com, een soort marktplaats voor de autoindustrie. Je ziet de twee testvarianten hieronder:

Op verschillende websites werd het verhaal-formulier getest tegen het tradionele formulier. Uiteindelijk bleek dat het verhaal-formulier verantwoordelijk voor een conversieverbetering van 25% tot wel 40%!

Test het zelf!

De verhaal-formulieren zijn een nieuw fenomeen. Er is niet veel meer over bekend dan de test die ik hierboven beschrijf. Ik vind het in ieder geval een innovatieve manier om het tradionele, saaie formulier makkelijker en aantrekkelijker te maken voor je bezoeker. De vraag is of het voor ieder type website en voor ieder type formulier goed werkt. Ik denk in principe van wel, maar dat weet je natuurlijk nooit zeker. Ik hoop dat dit artikel en bijbehorende voorbeelden je inspiratie geven om het zelf te testen op je eigen site!

Wat denk jij?

Ik ben ook wel benieuwd wat jij, beste lezer, denkt van dit fenomeen. Een veelbelovend format wat de nieuwe standaard gaat worden? Of zijn bezoekers zo opgevoed met standaardformulieren dat het nog jaren duurt voordat de massa dit begrijpt (en bovenstaande test dus een toevalstreffer is). Zou je het zelf willen testen op je eigen site? Of beter nog: zou je het direct willen implementeren (zonder testen dus) omdat je er voor 100% in gelooft?

Dit artikel is geschreven door Christ Coolen en eerder gepubliceerd op zijn weblog maar hij schrijft over het toepassen van psychologische overtuigingsprincipes om online conversie te verhogen. Christ is op dit Sitemanager / marketeer voor Managernet & Loopbaan bij ISBW.

last week I posted a static image that appeared to move. Except that it only worked for about 50% of you. let’s try another one. Take a look at this static image….

To me they appear to sway together.  is that what you are seeing?  Hopefully this will work for more than 50% of you this time!

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Doen?

On my list of creative management solutions to dire situations, I offer the rolling whiteboard.

The rolling whiteboard was a curiosity at the start-up. Not a full size whiteboard, but a door-sized whiteboard on wheels, suitable for rolling into conference rooms and cubicles alike. I never knew who owned it; I just grabbed it in a moment of desperation.

It was end game. The time in the project where you pay for every single shortcut you’ve taken, for every specification you didn’t write, and for all the warnings from engineers that you’ve ignored. All the data is grim. Bug arrival rates are skyrocketing while bug resolution rates are pathetic because, uh, well, engineers are still finishing features.

Like I said, grim.

The endless stream of bad news was grating on everyone. We were already three weeks into working weekends with no end in sight. A normally pleasantly pessimistic engineering staff had gone uncomfortably quiet. Everyone was staring at “the date we can’t miss” and thinking, “I guarantee we’re missing it”.

I needed a game.

An Entertaining System

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Impressive, toch prefereer ik Google Reader

You know all those share buttons across the Web? They are getting more and more social. What I mean by that is initially they were used to share stories or content mostly via email on a one-to-one basis, but over the past year or so services like Facebook and Twitter have been overtaking the way people use those buttons to share stories, videos, images, and links.

The way most people interact with these button is through widgets on publisher’s sites. But one of the largest sharing button networks, ShareThis, is about to turn that around and introduce a Share Stream which shows you what your Facebook friends are sharing across the Web. Soon your Twitter followers will be added as well (at launch you will only be able to see what everyone is sharing across Twitter). Of course, the Share Stream is also available as a customizable widget to show on any site.

A link at the bottom of each ShareThis widget will invite you to find out what your friends are sharing. When you click on it, you will be taken to a Share Stream where you can log in using your Facebook, Twitter, Google, or Yahoo IDs. There you will see what your else people are sharing from the site you just came from or about the same topic as the page you were on. The Share Stream can be filtered by trending or real-time topics, by source, by what everyone is sharing, or only by what your friends are sharing.

ShareThis gets its data from the 130,000 sites which use its sharing buttons and collectively reach 430 million unique visitors a month. Its No.1 competitor AddThis is somewhat bigger, but ShareThis recognizes the same users across sites and creates a semantic index of the every page where its buttons are placed. Using a taxonomy based on Wikipedia categories, ShareThis can figure out the topics associated with each page that is shared. Thanks to this topic knowledge, ShareThis can suggest other pages on related topics which are also being shared by your friends or more generally.

CEO Tim Schigel plans to create an ad network of sorts which will let publishers and advertisers target ads to people based on what they are sharing based on browser cookie data (yup, every time you share, you are being tracked, anonymously). He keeps data on engagement levels after people share content, and while the pageviews resulting from each click are still highest for email, Facebook is catching up. And Facebook has a bigger multiplier effect (on average three different people click on each shared link versus just one for email) which puts it over the top in terms of impact. Twitter’s multiplier effect is six times higher (18 clicks per link), but its engagement levels are much lower.

More importantly, people who follow a link from Facebook, says Schigel, “are 50 percent more engaged,” on average, than people who find the same page from search. Intuitively that makes sense because there is more hit or miss with search results compared to following a suggested link from someone you trust.

Like other sharing networks, ShareThis has seen Facebook soar to 42 percent of all sharing, beating out email (at 40.7 percent) for the first time in February. Twitter represents 8.7 percent of all sharing via the ShareThis button. So the Share Stream pretty much already exists on Facebook and Twitter alone.

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Impressive, toch prefereer ik Google Reader

You know all those share buttons across the Web? They are getting more and more social. What I mean by that is initially they were used to share stories or content mostly via email on a one-to-one basis, but over the past year or so services like Facebook and Twitter have been overtaking the way people use those buttons to share stories, videos, images, and links.

The way most people interact with these button is through widgets on publisher’s sites. But one of the largest sharing button networks, ShareThis, is about to turn that around and introduce a Share Stream which shows you what your Facebook friends are sharing across the Web. Soon your Twitter followers will be added as well (at launch you will only be able to see what everyone is sharing across Twitter). Of course, the Share Stream is also available as a customizable widget to show on any site.

A link at the bottom of each ShareThis widget will invite you to find out what your friends are sharing. When you click on it, you will be taken to a Share Stream where you can log in using your Facebook, Twitter, Google, or Yahoo IDs. There you will see what your else people are sharing from the site you just came from or about the same topic as the page you were on. The Share Stream can be filtered by trending or real-time topics, by source, by what everyone is sharing, or only by what your friends are sharing.

ShareThis gets its data from the 130,000 sites which use its sharing buttons and collectively reach 430 million unique visitors a month. Its No.1 competitor AddThis is somewhat bigger, but ShareThis recognizes the same users across sites and creates a semantic index of the every page where its buttons are placed. Using a taxonomy based on Wikipedia categories, ShareThis can figure out the topics associated with each page that is shared. Thanks to this topic knowledge, ShareThis can suggest other pages on related topics which are also being shared by your friends or more generally.

CEO Tim Schigel plans to create an ad network of sorts which will let publishers and advertisers target ads to people based on what they are sharing based on browser cookie data (yup, every time you share, you are being tracked, anonymously). He keeps data on engagement levels after people share content, and while the pageviews resulting from each click are still highest for email, Facebook is catching up. And Facebook has a bigger multiplier effect (on average three different people click on each shared link versus just one for email) which puts it over the top in terms of impact. Twitter’s multiplier effect is six times higher (18 clicks per link), but its engagement levels are much lower.

More importantly, people who follow a link from Facebook, says Schigel, “are 50 percent more engaged,” on average, than people who find the same page from search. Intuitively that makes sense because there is more hit or miss with search results compared to following a suggested link from someone you trust.

Like other sharing networks, ShareThis has seen Facebook soar to 42 percent of all sharing, beating out email (at 40.7 percent) for the first time in February. Twitter represents 8.7 percent of all sharing via the ShareThis button. So the Share Stream pretty much already exists on Facebook and Twitter alone.

Today in a note and email from the Twitter API Team, Twitter has outlined upcoming changes to its gelocation API.

As it stands now, users can create “geo-tweets,” or Tweets that are tagged with very specific GPS coordinates. The level of specificity unnerves some users who are wary to give away such personal and actionable information.

Twitter is out to make that all much better. The upcoming changes include giving coordinates context, turning them into locations. People “inherently want to talk about a “place”.  a place, for a lot of people, has a name and is not a latitude and longitude pair.” Look out Foursquare? At the moment, just what a location means and how it will be created and manged is unclear.

Twitter does highlight code examples as to how a tweet will be tagged in SoMa, but how the location is first built is still not specified. Developers, if I have this wrong, drop a note in the comments.

Twitter is also going to “help users who aren’t comfortable annotating their tweets with their exact coordinates, but, instead, are really happy to say what city, or even neighborhood, they are in.” This of course will give users a variety of privacy options, giving everyone a level that they are comfortable with.

Finally, “annotating your place with a name does that too,” meaning that new API upgrades will be flexible enough to handle location in many new configurations.

Big upcoming upgrades that are going to help Twitter continue to grow and improve. Of course, this will do nothing to solve Twitter’s continuing problem: uptime.

This “first pass” will only apply to US data, sadly. This will b rapidly expanded. Twitter also requests that all questions are sent to @TwitterAPI.

Hat tip @zacwitte.

Mark Suster is a Partner at GRP Partners, a Venture Capital firm in Los Angeles. He blogs at Both Sides of the Table and can be found on Twitter at @msuster.

I’m often asked by entrepreneurs and business owners whether it is worth blogging, and if so, what they should blog about. On the first question, the answer is obvious to me — you must blog as an entrepreneur.

In this post I’ll cover why you need to blog, how to determine what to blog about, and finding your blog’s voice.

Why You Must Blog

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I believe that blogging in your business is vital to creating a public personae and making your company more accessible. In an era where companies like Zappos have differentiated themselves based on service, it is important to be public and accessible.

My industry of venture capital, for example, has been shrouded in secrecy for 30 years, making the process of raising funds opaque for most entrepreneurs. When I started my first company in 1999, there were almost no public sources of venture capital fund raising information. Years later I discovered the blog of VC Brad Feld, then later VentureHacks, and Fred Wilson’s technology & VC blog, each of which clarified and demystified the venture capital process.

So when I started blogging, I mainly viewed it as “earned media,” or a chance to let entrepreneurs get to know me by sharing my thoughts online with complete transparency; a concept that is repeatable for any business.

In less than a year I’ve attracted a large monthly following of readers who come to my blog to discuss how to build startups, how to raise money, and to get my thoughts on technology markets. By publicly sharing my thoughts, I’ve been able to engage in online discussions with people all over the world, and though it was an unintended consequence, my deal flow has gone up dramatically. In other words, blogging can be a valuable networking tool and help the bottom line.

What Should You Blog About?

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Start by defining the audience with whom you want to have a relationship. Presumably they are your customers, partners, suppliers and your broader industry as a whole. You should think about what kind of information they would find valuable. You should also try to talk about something that is differentiated from what other blogs in your field cover, even if your approach is just slightly different or new.

Make sure the topic is something that you’ll have a passion for writing about on a regular basis. If you’re not going to keep up with your blog, you shouldn’t start one in the first place. It’s a commitment, believe me. If you pick a topic that relates to your customers, but you’re not that passionate about it, then you may have a bigger problem on your hands!

The Right and Wrong Way to Blog

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Let me give some examples of the right and wrong approach to blogging.

Right: I always liked the Mint.com blog. Even in the early days when they were relatively unknown, they blogged about personal finance. They talked about how to manage credit and balance your bank account — obvious topics for a startup focused on managing personal money. They were able to take a leadership role in talking about managing your money in a way that supported their brand and created a community around their product.

Wrong: A friend of mine has a company in the personal finance space also. His blog was all about how to run a startup and raise venture capital. He was outrageous, brash and crass in his style, and I told him so. I said, “Your goal isn’t to be the cool kid in the venture capital circles. Your job is to build a great company and you’ll be a hero in entrepreneurial circles as a result of your success. Speak to your customers — that is what a blog is for.”

Finding Your Blog’s Voice

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So you know you need to blog, and you’re convinced you ought to write about something you’re passionate about and that speaks to your customers. How can you create something that people will want to come and read every day?

1. Be authentic

The thing that kills most blogs, in my view, is when you can tell that the writer is just going through the motions. You need to find a “voice” that is authentically yours. People will get used to your style and your style will become your signature.

2. Be transparent

The “old school” way of getting media attention was to submit press releases. These were artificially crafted documents that were filled with glowing reviews of your company. In short, they felt fake. The best way to establish your voice is to be transparent.

Be willing to talk like a human being. Be willing to show feelings and a point of view. Let your inner self come out rather than your “inner bullet point.” Don’t use too much lingo. Don’t feel like your prose has to sound like it was crafted by a university professor. Just speak!

3. Get inside your readers’ minds

I give this advice often and in many scenarios, including public speaking. When people speak to many audiences, they sometimes get into a canned routine. They give the same presentation no matter which crowd they’re addressing. The key is that each time you present, you need to think about who is in the audience and what they want to hear. The same is true for blogging.

On my blog, my audience is made of startup entrepreneurs and probably other VCs. When I write I try to be mindful of who these people are, the knowledge I assume they have, and what I believe they want to know.

4. Solicit feedback

I ask people what they want to read about. I regularly ask for feedback on what I’m writing. When people give me good suggestions, I try to cover those topics.

When community members write awesome comments, I’ll sometimes write a post about what they said to highlight them and their contributions. In my opinion, the best way to build an audience over time is to engage with them and to highlight those that really contribute positively to you.

5. Don’t be offensive or take big public risks

I sometimes read blogs that get extreme. I read a blog once that jokingly suggested “offering your angels cocaine if that would get them to invest.” It was intended to be funny. It wasn’t. And comments like this run the risk of offending people. This was a blog about personal finance, and I found the comment totally irresponsible and at odds with the brand image the blogger was trying to project.

I read a blog yesterday where the author was trying to make fun of a negative comment he got on his product. The blogger highlighted him and called him “retarded,” which I, and I’m sure many others, find offensive. There’s no upside to this type of comment, but there’s a big downside. My esteem for him went down.

Further, unless your company revolves around taking stands on controversial issues, it’s best to leave your political commentary at home. Statements like these stand to upset or anger half of your potential customers no matter what side you take.

6. Have fun

This may be obvious, but if writing a blog becomes a chore for you it will show. Try to make your writing fun and it will be easier to stick to. It will also reflect in your voice.

Happy blogging!

More blogging resources from Mashable:

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- 14 Fantastic Free WordPress Themes
- HOW TO: Build a More Beautiful Blog
- How the Resort Industry is Using Social Media
- Why Brands are Becoming Media
- 4 Elements of a Successful Business Web Presence
- How Social Media Helps One Small Business Connect with Fans

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, johnnyscriv

[Image Credit: Kristina B]

Tags: blog, blogging, business, entrepreneurship, how to, small business, social media

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