Rick Perry’s National TV Campaign Ending Presidential Debate

(NOTE: Normally I don’t blog about politics, but this was just too big a fail to pass up)

Rick Perry Fails Bigtime In his republican Presidential debate on National Television and essentially removes himself from the race with this answer.

I’m not American, so I can’t vote, but watching this blew me away. Someone please give the details and the proper answers in the comments as to what the hell he is trying to spit out here?

Growing With the Digital Media Age

With technology and digital media and marketing moving at record speeds, think about how your company can stay ahead of competitors.

The number of apps downloaded will leap from 7 billion this year to nearly 50 billion next year.

Let that sink in for a bit – not that that’s all too surprising, the way digital media is moving. Babies born today play with iPads and iPhones, and will probably learn more about digital tools and products before they’re five years old just by playing with them while their parents are busy – ever see the YouTube video of the baby trying to make images bigger on a magazine because she was used to playing with an iPad? It’s already happening.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aXV-yaFmQNk

Therefore, companies need to be ahead of the game. That baby? And hundreds of other babies like that baby? They’re your future consumers. And one other thing – at the rate technology is moving, that generation of babies is going to grow up knowing technology, get used to things moving quickly and all the new apps, and they’ll get impatient when companies don’t have an app out there that makes their lives easier.

Now, back to the earlier stat: The number of apps downloaded will leap from 7 billion this year to nearly 50 billion next year.

That stat was taken from a 2010 study by GetJar, the world’s second largest app store, which also said that the market for mobile device software programs should rocket to 17.5 billion dollars (US) within three years.

Apps are where it’s at. Think about it: How often are you at home, but rather than go to your desktop computer or laptop, you’ll use your phone to look something up or use an app to order food/pay your bills/tweet what you’re doing? It’s probably often enough that really makes this stat resonate. In addition, the tablet’s usage is only increasing, not decreasing, which means laptops may soon become a thing of the past. Know what that means? That’s right – laptops don’t use apps, but tablets do.

Where is Digital Media Going?

Therefore, if you’re thinking of how your company can progress and where it can go from here, the answer is, keep moving. The key with digital media is it’s constantly moving and changing – what apps can your company provide to stay ahead of the curve, and help your customers stay ahead of the curve, too? What apps can you create to help your customers in general? What can make their lives more convenient while using your products? Thinking about how the masses use digital media is key to moving ahead in this market.

This is really well done: enjoy! (Click on the image below my costume)

Happy halloween….my costume was: Occupy Sesame St.  - Where 1% of the Monsters on Occupy Sesame St. Eat 99% of the cookies!

What’s Next Up for Digital Marketing?

Find out how digital marketing tools are changing and how they’ll improve in the near future. If you’re in advertising, take note!

Digital marketing is one of those platforms where if your company is not on board by now and doesn’t have any idea where the digital marketing movement is going, it will be left behind.

However, that begs the question: what’s next for digital marketing?

In this day and age, companies are making it a priority and necessity to focus on online branding. Various reports from several companies at the forefront of technology, including Mashable and Hasai (Hasai is a social media/digital firm) show that digital marketing – which encompasses social media marketing, viral videos, website ads and SEO – is already the way of the present and future. But the thing about digital mediums is they’re constantly changing. How can anyone keep up with what’s the latest and what’s in the past?

To help those in charge of digital marketing at companies across the U.S. and Canada, here are some tips to take note of as far as what to expect in the next few months – but check back here to see what the trends are soon…they’re constantly changing.

Search is evolving.

The economy is still up in the air, therefore,

marketing budgets are in jeopardy.

This is the great thing about online marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) – search will do well thanks to its clear and measurable short-term ROI. In the next few months and even years, search engine searches will become more relevant and efficient for users, as well as companies which optimize.

In addition, there’s now competition among search engines – Google, Bing and Yahoo! were the top three, but now Bing is using Yahoo!’s results after their deal – and therefore, new features to improve searches are sure to follow.

Social media is important to search, too – Twitter search is its own application, while Google and Bing search results can pull from public Twitter and Facebook feeds. If 200 people liked or retweeted a blog post right away, within a few hours of posting, it can end up ranking on the first page of Google for its targeted search terms. They love viral content…who wouldn’t! so its been

built into the search engine algorithms now.

Online video advertising is growing.

Not just YouTube and Hulu – online video is being watched more and more via gaming consoles, like Xbox360 (soon to be Xbox720), and mobile devices Developments in the sector will be driven largely by competition, and viral video analytics are becoming more and more sophisticated. This means advertisers will want to put their digital marketing dollars to use in viral seeding strategies, partnering with online influencers, paid placements and social media, to spread viral video campaigns.

Advertisers need to make sure they are using this strategy because it is relevant to the brand or the message, and they can track its effects on users with several apps or tracking sites, such as Klout, one of the best mediums to find out what users, followers, etc., are talking about, and if they’re talking about your company and products or if they talk about anything relevant, which would make them part of your company’s target market.

Mobile takes on the online realm.

According to the Mobile Marketing Association, advertisers in the U.S. spend around $2.16 billion on mobile marketing.

With smartphones, an increasing number of users (the iPhone has a reported 57 million) and ever-improving video and online features, advertisers have more to work with on mobile phones. Take Pandora.com, for example. The app is a music app, yet advertisers can buy ad space for video ads – pretty much a commercial break you watch in between listening to music. Google bought Motorola for $12 billion just to catch up on the patents “arms race.” Google wants to stay an active competitor with Apple, and it knows how to reach an audience – mobile marketing.

GPS Becomes Important

Call it “Big Brother” technology, but in future years, in order to get certain incentives, consumers will have to make their locations known.

While many are understandably reluctant to do this, GPS-enabled devices and social media platforms like FourSquare help companies profit greatly through this type of digital marketing – social rewards programs are huge! And yes, there actually is a loyalty marketing company called Social Rewards that can help your company get started.

While companies should be mindful of these types of campaigns and how they can give consumers the incentive to participate and make their locations made public on the Internet, those who do are allowing advertisers to tap into an engaged network of users who want special promotions based on where they are in any city. An increase in these types of apps for companies – and possibly even new social media platforms to compete

(Gowalla is a competitor to FourSquare, for example)

– should be on the rise in the next few years.

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Yeah, so I’m sick of using ‘Notes’ to import blog posts from Digital Vegetarian to facebook so I thought I would test this out.

We’ve been in Hawaii (Kauai Island) for a while now and at the Wappow Search and Social Conference. Here’s How they used Google Hangouts to let me watch Dennis Yu’s presentation while getting some work done at the hotel.

So thanks to the kind folks at Kauai.com Dennis and I got to go sailing in an actual race. It was pretty sick.

Videos and photos of Sailing…on the way.

Today, these photos are a little grey and darkened, but it seemed fitting during the Sept 11th, 2011 Memorial. Here are some first hand accounts I took while walking around Lower Manhattan today.

Today was an interesting day. I personally have only been in NYC since July 4th of 2011, and remember watching the 9/11 events unfold on Cnn.com whilst working in Silicon Valley north ten years ago….So much has happened since.

To learn more, I recently watched a History Channel biography of the events of that day and have been exploring the city, so to see things and understand the geography (I’m in Lower Manhattan, about 5 city blocks from WTC) it made things much more ‘close to home’.

This is from Battery Park:

There are still many unanswered questions, but I felt today was a day of respect for those who perished both in the planes and on the ground or inside the towers. I don’t know how to possibly fathom what was going through the minds of the people inside the buildings that couldn’t get down, nor those on planes who when they attacked the hijackers, were then doomed. It’s super tragic and extremely hard to think about.

Today I took some photos and videos to share with those who couldn’t be here. I wasn’t at the memorial as I didn’t have anyone I knew involved, but NYC was bustling with people today, tons of police and it was a strange grey day without any sun.

See here how there is a flag hanging from the crane during a pause in construction for the memorial services today, attended by George W. Bush and Barack Obama and families.

CNN did feature a cool story today about the rescue dogs of 9/11.

There was a building with the 9/11 museum preview in it.