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A New Way To Experience The News

People like to consume their media in many different ways. When it comes to getting our daily dose of news, some people like to read their morning paper over breakfast, other people listen to the news on the drive to work, and many of us check the headlines online as soon as we get to work.

MSNBC.com shows that they are aware of our diverse media habits, and they are offering us even more ways to experience the news via www.NewsWare.msnbc.com. MSNBC.com has added Spectra, Newsblaster and Newscroller to their existing collection of podcasts, RSS feeds and mobile applications.

Spectra is a news visualization tool that allows people to navigate the latest headlines in a colorful three dimensional space.

For the casual news reader out there who would rather be playing online games then checking the latest news, there is Newsblaster. It is a take on the classic “Bubble Blaster” arcade game, that rewards you with news headlines and snippets. It is also available as a Facebook application.

Newsscroller is a customizable news widget. It allows you to choose your favorite news and entertainment topics, and can be embeded on your blog, webpage, or social network pages.

Not all of these applications will be of interest to everyone, but I’m impressed to see MSNBC experimenting with different news delivery formats. I’m a podcast junkie, so I’ll be checking out a few of their podcasts.

15% Off Coupon for TLA in May

This is for all you sinners (link renters) out there.

TLA is giving a 15% off discount in the month of May when you use coupon code may.

Apparently this will give you 15% off your order for the life of your order.

Renting Domain Names Is A Bad Idea

Over the past year I have purchased a few after market domain names. It amazes me how many times I am given the option to rent the domain name if I can’t afford to buy it.

One domain I wanted to purchase had an asking price of $695 and a 1 year rental price of $195. In one year I could spend a lot of time, money and resources building links and marketing the domain name, only to have the owner seriously increase the rental price or refuse to rent it to me the following year.

There are so many reasons why not to rent domain names, and I’m having trouble coming up with a single good reason to rent one.

If you really want a specific domain name bad and can’t afford the asking price, consider a partnership. But make sure the domain name is put into your name. Links and marketing are attached to the domain, not the coding and design of the site.

If you know of a good reason to rent a domain name, do tell.

The Weekender: SEO Checklist

Have you ever wondered how hard it will be to rank for certain keywords or keyword phrases? Try out SEO Chat’s Keyword Difficulty Check Tool. This tool gives you

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Funy Video Friday: Awareness Test

This weeks funny video is an awareness test from Transport For London.

Its interesting what you miss when you’re trying to focus on one thing.

Enjoy your Friday!

Fiskars Cinema Series

If you are looking for a great example of online video I recommend you check out the Fiskars Cinema Series. This series of three documentary style videos tells the story about a 360 year-old artisan enclave and “company town” called Fiskars Village.

These videos are telling a story, it is obvious that these are promotional videos, but they exude passion and craft and do not feel like commercials. These videos remind me a lot of the TV version of “This American Life” and some of Hillman Curtis’ artist series videos.

These videos are presented on a flash heavy site with very little text. I would recommend that along with all this great video they include some text. This would improve their organic search results and give people who liked the videos, more information about the village.

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The Weekender: No-Brainer

Peg Davis of MarketingExperiments Blog discusses the rising popularity of “blended search”. She recommends that we all start optimizing our video and image assets to catch the wave.

youTube

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Funny Video Friday: Tech Bubble Music Video

A few months back we posted the very funny Tech Bubble music video created by Richter Scales. With in a couple days it was taken off of youTube.

Well, it’s

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Accidental Branding and Trendspotting for the Next Decade

One of the many perks to having a blog with a decent amount of traffic and the word ‘marketing’ in the title is that publishers send you books for

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The Weekender: Watch The Masters Online

Everyone’s favorite ex Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki, along with Will Mayall and Kathryn Henkens have launched alltop.com. The site is an aggregate of stories from “all the top” sites

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