10 Days With Google+

So, unless you’ve been completely disconnected for the last few weeks, you will have likely heard about Google+. This is Google’s latest attempt at breaking through in the very competitive and rapidly expanding social media realm. It’s not their first attempt mind you, but we won’t go into too much detail about Wave, Buzz and their other… let’s call them.. experiments.

They have quite a lot more invested in this project though, and have gone as far as planning to rename the incredibly popular Picasa and Blogger websites to Google Photos and Google Blogs, respectively. Last time we looked this change hadn’t gone through, but it’s planned to happen during the public launch of Google+, since it is still in invite-only beta stage.

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Epilepsy Canada Fundraiser – Purple Palooza 2011

Danielle K. a grade 8 student at Toronto’s Hodgeson Senior Public School afflicted with Epilepsy wanted to raise awareness and money for a cause she intimately believes in – finding a cure for Epilepsy. Danielle and her grade 8 classmates created a campaign they affectionately called “Purple Palooza” which would do just that – raise money for Epilepsy research. Danielle’s class (and teacher) organized a fundraising campaign that would make Donald Trump of  ”The Apprentice” proud. The students collaborated on a campaign that included several business elements such as: idea brainstorming, strategy, branding, marketing, and tactical execution.

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Why URL Shorteners Are Amazing

Sure, everyone has seen them. Those funny URLs that don’t seem to make any sense. They show up in Twitter posts mostly, or even on your Facebook wall from time to time. Even Google and Youtube have joined the bandwagon. What I’m talking about, are shortened URLs. The way they work, is instead of using a standard (and long) URL such as http://www.glacier-digital.com/Internet-Marketing/Search-Engine-Optimization.html, shortening services can be used to get them down to a much more manageable, digestible size such as : http://bit.ly/ka1Qci. The reason they were originally created isn’t entirely clear, but (and this is just a theory) it seems awfully suspicious that they were introduced around the time Twitter began it’s quick ascent to the the upper elite of the social media realm. Short URLs feel right at home within those precious 140 characters.

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CAPTCHA, Expired

Blade Runner posterIf you’ve read online offers peddling any number of ‘enhancing’ pills, NBA swag or opportunities to purchase only the most affordable iPads online whilst perusing a forum or the comments section of a blog, then the purveyor of said website is probably in need of some measure of controling spam. The common go-to controls for such precautionary measures are called CAPTCHA, or their adorable little brother SAPTCHA.

CAPTCHA is an absurd acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart” and in its essence is a humanity test; kind of like the one administered in the 1982 movie Blade Runner, but with considerably less suspense. The hope behind CAPTCHA is to stymie a spambot by confounding it with a question or task that rudimentary bot software can’t figure out, but is still something a human with fully-functional fuzzy logic can solve easily.

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The Apple Effect & The Power Of Marketing

Just to start, I will let my bias be known that I have never been a fan of Apple. I have always found their products to be something akin to Windows-Lite. Like a pair of those scissors you were given in grade school that you couldn’t possibly cut yourself with. But obviously they are doing something right, what with the company being one of the most valuable on the planet.

Which begs the question, how on earth did that happen, and why is it still happening? Is it because of their quality products? Are they providing something unique? Or is it all smoke and mirrors, repeatedly pulled off with such precise accuracy that the masses eat it up and beg for more?

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