Oh, the Places You’ll Go

Internet Video Marketing is getting better and is becoming more mainstream. Videos are being used on websites much more productively than in the past. Since a video is easy to edit it is possible to make multiple language versions of one video by simply dubbing the voice.

Internet Video Marketing is most effective when:

1. The product has something special about its motion or sounds that the client will benefit from hearing.

A very well known commercial spoke of the virtues of Alka-Seltzer with the famous “plop, plop, fizz, fizz” song while we watched 2 tablets dropped in water and begin to dissolve. Many Americans can remember that song (and can still sing it). The product [Read more →]

I ran into a pretty cool site today for We Europeans, Shopping.com in the UK Searches a range of goods from computers, garden products, furniture, lingerie, jewelery & clothing - pretty much anything that you could want to buy, and they include product reviews both for the products reviewed and for the stores selling the product.

This site allow easy access to a free comparison shopping service that means that [Read more →]

I started to create a new page, typed in text and then erased everything when I changed my mind. the Letter ‘S’ stayed in the Title line by mistake. took me 2 days to get that darn thing to go away.

Every time I deleted it, it came back. Like Jason in the horror films.

Headache today and I still have a lot of work to do. Charge on.

Apogee Search is a company that does search engine marketing in Austin, Texas.

They are an example of a SEM company that seems to have the idea tight, instead of counting click-throughs or metrics that a client can’t use to show an increase in the bottom line, they only use hard numbers. Using a company like this would show something in you P&L lines [Read more →]

Répertoire d’Articles is an article directory that my partner and I have made. She is focused on marketing, has been for years, and I have always been IT. Maybe not the match you would expect, but I build the sites for her in my spare time. Thinking about it, [Read more →]

Video marketing is becoming more mainstream and videos are being used on websites more productively than in the past. Since a video is easy to edit it is possible to make multiple language versions of one video by dubbing the voice. If the person speaking is famous and you want to keep their voice, subtitles are simple to create and to add on top of a video.

Internet video’s can be used on your home page, it is best if the video does not launch automatically because there are people that don’t like the intrusion and prefer to have audio and video optional. There are several companies that create video that seems detached from your actual site and even when the screen is scrolled, the video will remain in one corner. This is very effective when the video is in the bottom right hand corner and has a white background. The white makes the video very evident. This type video can be set to play automatically [Read more →]

Well, that was funny. I was posting different forms of a sig-line for a client and forgot to take them down.

I suppose this is a lesson in why you should do backups. Honest mistakes happen. [Read more →]

OK, maybe I do have too much time on my hands. I am nearly done with my any language to any language plugin, I am nearly done with the newsletter, I am nearly done with the articles that I an ghostwriting, but I am really a bit too nuts for numbers.

I started a list about 7 weeks ago of how many Google countries have hit my site. Google.com is common. Ever get a Google.vi? Google.lk?

Actually kind of funny because I assumed I knew all the top level domains, but I really don’t.

If you like the code then sign up for my updates - they come out about monthly.

Right now this sidebar widget works from any language to the destination language. Flags were the best way to set it up. I am making it a plugin, come back at the end of May to pick that up.

I have 2 rows of 12 will have to do; it looks like the graphic just above, in fact it is the graphic just above!

You can get the code here.

You can stick the code in your sidebar or a widget panel text box. [Read more →]

I just came back from Google and they have updated their translation tools.

Less than a month ago the options were English to 10 languages and those same 10 languages back to English. 20 options, and to be honest I was happy with that. I went on the site when I made my widget and we were up to English going into 14 languages and those 14 going back to English, and the occasional second language.

Today I went to the site and it appears that there are 23 languages - 24 if you count the 2 versions of Chinese. There is also the time saving option that they should have as the default “Detect Language”. This means if you are on a site and you have no idea of the language but like the pictures you can tell Google to translate the page even though you don’t know the language. OK, I am a bit too geeky, but this is really cool stuff.

I have a simple testing process to see if something translates and it worked in all the languages so far. Everyone should do this if translating. Take you text and translate it. Then take the tranlsated result and bring it back into your original language.

Translating “what does this do?” English to French results in “qu’est-ce que cela?”

Translating “qu’est-ce que cela?” French to English results in “what is this?”

Translating “What is the purpose of that? ” English to French results in “quel est le but de cela?”

Translating “quel est le but de cela?” French to English results in “What is the purpose of that?”

The difference is important and it is best that you do something link this. If you are using a translation tool for business, translate sentence by sentence, and then the full paragraph. There are times when the tool will change something based on the context of a paragraph.

All things considered, this is a great tool.

The reason this is so important to me is I am building an article directory in French. I want to make sure that I get things right.

BTW, the languages are:

1. Arabic
2. Bulgarian
3. Chinese (Simplified)
4. Chinese (Traditional)
5. Croatian
6. Czech
7. Danish
8. Dutch
9. English
10. Finnish
11. French
12. German
13. Greek
14. Hindi
15. Italian
16. Japanese
17. Korean
18. Norwegian
19. Polish
20. Portuguese
21. Romanian
22. Russian
23. Spanish
24. Swedish