The Google Grants programme has just celebrated its 10th birthday. Launched in April 2003, this scheme has evolved over the years and Google works with registered charities, providing them with grants to spend in Adwords. However, the number of charities that are actively using this suggests that the majority of UK charities are either overlooking the benefits of this, or are simply not aware of the scheme’s existence. This additional resource of up to $10,000 per month can make a huge difference to a charity’s marketing budgets and so although it can take several months for a grant application to be approved by Google, if you have not yet applied, it is definitely worth doing so here.

This grant does come with a number of restrictions, such as that the ads must only run on Google UK, links in the ads must only be to the pre-approved domain, the ads must be text only and not commercial, there must be no adverts on your own site such as Adsense and each bid must cost no more than $2.

The last criterion is a reasonably new update as Google increased this limit from $1 per click at the end of January. However, this increase in bids came with the announcement that all Grant funded adverts would now be featured underneath any self-funded company or charity adverts. So while this change may open your organisation up to being able to target keywords that were previously outside of this bid limit, sites are likely to have seen a decrease in traffic due to featuring lower down the listings.

However, with the changes that were announced to Adwords just a couple of weeks after this, PPC account managers have been given the opportunity to better manage these adverts. By upgrading to enhanced campaigns, you are now able to manage all devices in one campaign, manually adjust the bid for mobile ads and show call extensions on these mobile ads. This shift from legacy to enhanced campaigns is going to be enforced automatically by the end of June for any accounts that have not made the change themselves. Google have since released a tool that allows you to change campaigns in an account in bulk.

Beyond that, Grant accounts should largely be run in the same way as normal Adwords campaigns. These accounts should be maintained (if you do not work on your account over a 3 month period then Google will stop your funding), the accounts should be well structured and you will need to optimise the account to ensure that you are getting the most out of your spend. Ensure that the keywords that you target are relevant to your organisation and the pages that you are sending visitors to are also relevant and contain a call to action in order to get the best return from your spend.

If you are running a Google Grant account, we would love to know what impact have you noticed since these changes were implemented.

In conjunction with the launch of FocusON for PPC month, we are giving away a Google Chromebook to one lucky reader. Simply visit the PushON Prizes app over at the PushON Facebook page and follow the three simple steps to be in with a chance of winning. HINT: You may want to read FocusON: An Introduction to PPC Marketing first!

The post Are You Making The Most Out Of Your Google Grants Account? appeared first on PushON Ltd.

This past week Google announced that it will give its users a ‘digital will’ option for their online data. The premise behind it being that users can decide what happens to their online account after they die.

It has been dubbed “data-after-death” and lets users tell Google what to do with emails and other data if their account becomes inactive.

Google email and YouTube posting can be deleted after three, six or twelve months of inactivity. Alternatively they can choose to give access to the data to specific people.

This got me thinking, what happens to all your data when you have gone? What about your Facebook page or Twitter? Social media usage has been increasing at an exponential rate but no one has considered the implications to the data on there.

Both Twitter and Facebook have policies in place to allow users to request that an account be deleted in the event of users passing. Twitter users can obtain a permanent backup of all tweets from a designated account.

What if you do not want to close your Social Media accounts? How about carrying on your social media activity even after you have died?!

Here are a couple of options;

Dead Social

Dead Social enables a user to send out messages after death from various social media accounts.

The key features are;

• Send messages directly to your private Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin account
• Send out a final message and / or series of scheduled messages
• Release unseen video and audio messages

DeadSocial covers all the post-death social media options, scheduling public Facebook posts, Tweets and even LinkedIn posts go out after someone has died. The free service will publish the text, video or audio messages directly from that person’s social media accounts or it can send a series of scheduled messages in the future, say on an anniversary or a loved one’s birthday. For now, all DeadSocial messages will be public, but the company plans to add support for private messages in the future.

LivesOn

This caught my attention because I read about the service and watched an episode of Black Mirror that contained very similar themes.

Essentially LivesOn analyse’s a user’s tweets and learns about what is frequently tweeted and the style of tweets. The idea being that in time a tweet from LivesOn would be identical (or as close) to what the original user would tweet. Tweets will begin to populate on your LivesOn feed. A user has to nominate an executor for the account and they can decide whether to keep the account live.

LivesOn’s slogan is;

When your heart stops beating, you’ll keep tweeting

Legacy Locker

The previous two examples specifically dealt with social media accounts, Legacy Locker deals with your online presence as a whole. Legacy will manage your Facebook, Paypal, Linkedin, iTunes and Gmail to name but a few.

There are different levels of accounts from free to $30 a month. The free account will store and hand over 3 logins to one beneficiary and send out a farewell message to your loved ones, the top tier account has unlimited access.

Would you be interested in any of these services? It would be great to know your thoughts.

Please Tweet us @PushONLTD

The post When life logs you off, how to stay online appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Twitter Music

We were given a glimpse of Twitter music over the weekend but only via the site – http://music.twitter.com. On Friday, rumours were going around about the launch of the new Twitter Music app, with Wiz Khalifa, Black Shelton, Soft Reeds, Pete Yorn, The Glitch Mob and Ryan Seacrest all saying how good the new Twitter music app is. The launch was expected to be on Friday, however, updates suggested that the weekend was the target, to be launched with the on-going Coachella festival.

If you now try to log into the site, you can grant access to your account but then the site will take you back to the original page.

What will the Twitter music app look like? Will it spell the end for Spotify? Only time will tell, we can’t answer any of these questions until Twitter release some more information about the App.

Blab - Social Media Conversation Predictor

News broke this week about an exciting new tool called Blab that can be used to predict social conversations that would emerge within 24,48 and 72 hours of them happening.

Blab can also track real-time conversations in any language and allows you to see what content, images and videos are being shared most within your social audience.

Using this information, Blab can improve key areas that your brand can benefit from, including Consumer Insights, Content Marketing, Pre-emptive Brand Protection and Search Engine Optimisation.

We look forward to testing this tool out, and predicting the social trends for the PushON social audience.

At Blab we’re mapping the conversation canvas to give you the most up-to-the-minute understanding of your brand’s audience—who they are, where they are and what they are talking about. Then in 24, 48, and 72 hour time frames, we’re accurately predicting how those conversations will grow and where they will migrate.

Foursquare 6.0

The latest update from Foursquare (6.0) adds an ‘Explore nearby’ search box and map to the main page of the app. This works perfectly to help find out what your friends are doing and shows what’s going on within the local area.

The update also allows for more accurate check-ins and trending popular locations while recommendations and further away goings-on are shown in a separate section.

Universal Analytics

Online marketing and off-line marketing collides. LovesData have hosted hack day using the Google Universal Analytics beta. The applications they have demonstrated strongly suggest that ‘big data’ will rule the roost in not just online, but also offline marketing very shortly.

Google – Map Maker

Google expanded its Map Maker edit tools to cover the UK this past week.

The software allows users to add details to specific sections of Google maps such as information about buildings, national parks and other details that may be of interest to its users.

Any suggestions or amendments are reviewed by other users and Google itself before they are accepted.

Map Maker users can edit and add four types of content:

• Places – such as a restaurant, gym, cinema
• Roads, Rivers and Railways – such as bicycle routes
• Building outlines – use of 3D images for houses, monuments
• Natural features and Political Boundaries – lakes, parks and natural structures

Another feature called Map Maker pulse allows users to see real time updates and displays submissions made by other users. The more users are active they get more ‘confidence’ which means future submissions will be subject to less inspections. 

This is another example of how crowd sourcing has cut costs to map areas by its own users rather than paying to get it done from a company.

That’s the end of the RoundUP for this week, we will leave you with this – GOOGLE STREET VIEW Hyperlapse: This tool allows you to creates a warp-speed Street View back and forth between a pair of points on a map. Give it a try!

The post Digital RoundUP 15/04/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Top 5 April Fool Digital Jokes

1. Bing

This is what happened when you searched for ‘Google’ on Bing:

2. YouTube – ‘YouTube’s ready to select a winner’

YouTube released a video saying the service would be coming to an end and they will be picking the “best video”:

3. Google

Google were to introduce a search-by-smell feature called Google “nose”

4. Google Treasure Map

Google added a new feature onto the Google Maps page, allowing for the World to be viewed in a ‘Treasure Map’ format.

5. Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic launches a glass-bottomed plane

Mashable created a list of the 2013 pranks, which can be found here:

The Ultimate Roundup of 2013′s Biggest April Fools’ Day Pranks

Facebook updates

Facebook’s messenger app has added VOIP which has now become available in the UK, following on from the US and Canada.

The option appears on active Messenger users’ profile page as ‘Free call’. I have checked this and it has not arrived on my screen yet but I imagine it will be rolled out soon. The call will be placed via WiFi or 3G.

Although the idea is great in theory in practice it will take a while before it takes off, why would you use an app to call and text when there are plenty already out there?

Will you be using it?

Facebook Phone

Screenshots of a phone rumoured to be announced by Facebook has been leaked ahead of an event on Thursday.

 The hardware will be produced by Android and have dedicated ‘Facebook’ style graphics and homepage.

The post Digital RoundUP 02/04/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

We’ve all been there. For the past couple of years it’s been a nightmare for us developers to spend hours either changing our CSS or HTML mark-up just so Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) can render our webpages correctly.  Since the launch of IE7 back in 2006, web technologies and web standards have changed significantly. Whenever I develop websites for clients, I usually don’t have any problems in regards to testing it cross browser, 98% of the time my websites work seamlessly on pretty much all the modern browsers until I’m asked to test it on IE7.

It is understood that most developers (including myself) still optimise websites for IE7, simply because there happens to be a small minority of users who still use that browser. Latest stats as of February 2013 show that usage of IE7 has dropped to less than 4% globally. The question we need to ask is, is it still worth putting in the effort to optimise websites for IE7 for this minority of users?

Based on my previous experience, it takes an enormous amount of time to make a website or web application optimised for IE7. Due to these problems, and the very small percentage of people who even use the browser, it doesn’t make it worthwhile as far as time, effort and money is concerned. Yes, it would be nice to have a website that is compatible with all browsers, but what are the chances of your visitors (target audience) accessing your website using IE7?

Why should we stop optimising for IE7?

Big name websites such as Google and Facebook officially announced last year that they no longer support older browsers like IE7 because they don’t have the capabilities to handle today’s modern web browsing needs. Google has urged people to update their browsers for a better and safer browsing experience. Facebook’s timeline has been completely phased out from IE7. When users visit their Facebook profile page they won’t see the timeline, but instead will be presented with the old profile page.

Some ecommerce websites have even started charging an ‘IE7 tax’. Australian retailer www.kogan.com was one of the first websites to come up with the idea of charging their users with an extra 6.8% tax. The website detects when visitors are using IE7 and issues a pop-up warning about the tax if the users purchasing goods from their website. The purpose of this approach is to encourage their users to upgrade to a modern browser for a better browsing experience of their website, thus avoiding the extra charge at the same time.

Why are people still using IE7?

One of the biggest reasons people are still stuck with IE7 is because some of them are still using Microsoft’s older operating systems. IE7 came pre-installed when Windows Vista was first launched in 2006, an operating system that many PC owners still use. Microsoft has also used several methods in an attempt to get its users to upgrade, but some organisations find it very expensive and time consuming to get all of their PC’s upgraded to modern standards. Most importantly it is our fault as developers as in the past we have spent hours optimising websites for IE7. This has only encouraged IE7 users to continue their browsing experience with IE7.

What can we do encourage users to upgrade their browsers?

• We can use similar tactics like the Australian retailer “Kogan”.
• Create landing pages that can detect if the users are using IE7 and provide them with a warning and upgrade solution.
• Use badges and small banners somewhere on your website to encourage users to upgrade. Last year a website called “The IE7 Countdown” launched to dedicate the countdown of IE7. They provide code snippets that can be easily embedded on your website to display tiny badges and banners. www.theie7countdown.com

I think it is time to stop spending unnecessary time fixing IE7 bugs and instead using that time to do something more productive.

The post Is it time to bury Internet Explorer (IE7) for good? appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Adria richards and that ‘joke’

When is a joke between two people private? The answer it seems is never.

Last week in the United States at a PyCon programming conference a developer who worked for PlayHaven made a joke amongst other things about ‘dongles’.

Adria Richards, a developer for a company called Sendgrid, was sat in front and tweeted this;

Not cool.Jokes about forking repo’s in a sexual way and “big” dongles.Right behind me #pycon twitter.com/adriarichards/…

— Adria Richards (@adriarichards) March 17, 2013

The developer was thrown out of the conference and subsequently fired from his job.

This act led to the lynch mob on the internet attacking Richards on Twitter with a flurry of offensive comments. Pressure was put on SendGrid to fire Richards and a few days after the original incident they relented. On Facebook they wrote;

Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards. While we generally are sensitive and confidential with respect to employee matters, the situation has taken on a public nature. We have taken action that we believe is in the overall best interests of SendGrid, its employees, and our customers. As we continue to process the vast amount of information, we will post something more comprehensive.

So at the end of it all two developers lost their jobs and the internet was outraged. This could have all be avoided had Richards turned round and said to them that the joke was inappropriate. The fact that she tweeted their picture and publicly shamed them was not the smartest idea and made her position untenable.

Once something hits the web there is no going back, think before you tweet.

Google Keep

In the wake of announcing the demise of its Reader service, Google last week launched a new product – Google Keep. The note-taking app was released last Wednesday for Android devices, to mixed reviews.

Keep was immediately thrown into the ring with the likes of Evernote, although I don’t necessarily think Google is going after the note-taking giant. If they were, surely they would have released it across all platforms. I agree with Danny Sullivan’s take that it’s simply a service for Android users to sync notes across different devices, like you can with the iOS Notes app. It’s something that was missing from the Android setup.

So what’s the app like? Being an Android user myself I was looking forward to testing the app as most of my life is synced to Google anyway. My initial thoughts were that it’s a typical Google product, simple, clean interface, easy to use, and did the job. There are a variety of ways to enter a note; you can add a standard note, a list, take a photo or speech input. There is also an ‘Add quick note’ textbox at the top for additional simplicity. The notes appear as tiles that can be colour customised, re-organised, and synced to Google Drive.

The app looks good, but once you start using it on a day-to-day basis you realise that there’s a few things missing. The lack of a sharing function is a bit of an oversight, if I want to send a shopping list to my girlfriend for instance, there should be an option to share it across to her Keep account. There is also no way to set a reminder for a note, which is very annoying. This is a bit of a dealbreaker because it’s such a basic feature for an app of this kind, I couldn’t replace Any.DO or Google Calendar without this functionality. It’s also hard to access your notes on the web, I was expecting a ‘Keep’ tab to have appeared on Google’s black bar but instead I have to manually type in drive.google.com/keep/. I’m sure there is an easier way, but the fact is it’s not intuitive.

In my opinion, Google have got an opportunity to make a really good app out of Keep, but it’s not there yet. I’m sure there will be numerous updates in the next couple of months that will make all of these improvements.

Have you tried Keep yet? What do you think?

Dropbox buy Mailbox for $100M as reservations reach the 1 Million Mark

Early in the week, reports were going around that Dropbox were launching a bid to buy Orchestra, the company behind Mailbox. It was reported in a blog by GigaOm, that Dropbox paid more than $50 million for Orchestra. However, this was questionable with other sources saying the fee was much closer to $100 million.

On the official Mailbox blog, they wrote about moving to the new office move after being bought by Dropbox. They also announced that they reached the 1 million reservation mark after six weeks of being available in the Apple store. After our blog on release, the demand still remains high for access to app. With this benchmark they also released version 1.1 of the app to fix a few bugs and adds “shake to undo” to its feature set.

“Today we’re releasing an update to Mailbox in the App Store. Among hundreds of fixes and improvements big and small, we’ve added shake to undo—the feature our users asked for most. You can download the version here if you haven’t already updated.”

What will Dropbox do next with Mailbox? Rumours circulating around a file attachment integration with Dropbox’s own services.

TWITTER TURNS SEVEN

Twitter reached the ripe old age of seven this past week, and it looks like its popularity is going to continue to grow.

When did you first tweet and how often do you use it?

And We’ll leave you with this Chrome Experiment called Maze to keep you busy during the week – Try it on the PushON Homepage! 

The post Digital RoundUP 25/03/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

google+ Sign-in

Last Tuesday Google launched Google+ Sign-In for third party developers, they can now allow users to sign into applications using their Google+ account. This is Google’s latest attempt to get ‘normal’ people using the social network, it will also give the search giant plenty of user data to slobber over.

Google is claiming that its new sign-in functionality is more secure than the likes of Twitter and, in particular, Facebook. It also gives users sharing options so that their social networks aren’t spammed with app updates and activity. Google+ director Matt Waddell released an image taking an indirect (but quite obvious) shot at Facebook with the tagline ‘Try the red pill.’ Facebook have received criticism in the past for ‘social spam’, however, Danny Sullivan took a closer look at Google’s new feature and decided that it’s not too dissimilar.

Take a look at Google’s launch video:

Google: how search works

A busy week for Google, it also released a stunning interactive infographic called ‘How Search Works.’ If you haven’t seen it yet and are thinking, ‘urgh, another SEO infographic’, take a look it’s pretty cool. The infographic itself gives a pretty basic and general overview of how Google indexes and ranks websites, but it also has some useful stuff for professional SEOs.

The coolest part is probably the live spam screenshots which show examples of ‘pure spam’ that Google has penalised. This is updated in real-time and some of the examples are pretty humorous.

These pages are examples of ‘pure spam.’ They appear to use aggressive spam techniques such as automatically generated gibberish, cloaking and scraping content from other websites.

This page also goes on to list the types of spam that Google looks for and takes action on such as cloaking, keyword stuffing and unnatural links to/from a site.

Google also published data for the first time on manual actions, webmaster notifications and reconsideration requests. The data in these graphs is really interesting. The graph below shows the number of websites that have had manual action taken against them over the last 8 years and is broken down by the different spam types.

YAHOO CEO BANS WORKING FROM HOME

Marissa Mayer, the Yahoo CEO, sent an email out to thousands of her employees last week in which she announced she was banning them from working ‘remotely.’

As a result, several hundred staff must relocate to their nearest Yahoo office by June or quit. Mayer’s said ‘to become the absolute place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we all need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices.’

Those who only work one or two days in the office will have to submit to the new regime. ‘Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings,’ she says, ‘speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.’

groupon send andrew mason packing

It came as little surprise last week when Andrew Mason was relieved from his post as CEO of Groupon. The company has been going through a rough patch since going public just over a year ago, and its poor 4th quarter earnings sent its stock reeling.

Rumours of Mason’s exit have been floating around for a while now, and he seemed to be expecting it as on Thursday he released this letter to his employees on Twitter.

For Groupon Employees: jottit.com/v5wux/ (Apparently, sharing oranges is necessary but insufficient #leadership)

— Andrew Mason (@andrewmason) February 28, 2013

‘After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I’ve decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding – I was fired today.’

Mason took full responsibility for his role in Groupon’s recent poor performance and told his former employees; ‘You are doing amazing things at Groupon, and you deserve the outside world to give you a second chance. I’m getting in the way of that.’

Groupon, now valued at less than £2 billion, is searching for Mason’s replacement. In the meantime, Executive Chairman Eric Lefkofsky and Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis are taking the reins.

That’s our weekly RoundUP of industry news, I’ll leave you with this little treat from Qualcomm:

The post Digital RoundUP 04/03/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

PlayStation 4 Announced 

On Wednesday night the worst kept secret in video gaming was finally revealed with the announcement of the Sony Playstation 4. During a two hour presentation the assembled media were told and shown the capabilities of the ‘most powerful platform ever’. However we did not get to see the console and were only shown the  ”DualShock 4″ controller.

Interestingly there was an acknowledgement from Sony that the previous console was difficult to develop for. This time round they contacted games developers whilst the console was being made, hopefully this means that more games companies want to get involved on the PS4.

So what can we expect with the PS4?

• A highly powerful AMD x86-based 8-core CPU, an enhanced GPU and amazingly 8GB of DDR5 RAM. This all means this will be the most powerful games console ever made and would go toe-toe with most gaming PC’s on the market.
• Games will still be on Blu-ray discs but all games will be fully downloadable, and can be played instantly with downloading continuing as you play.
• The PS4 will have an ‘Instant On’ feature which means the console never turns off but rather hibernates. This means that the user can instantly return to whatever was being played prior to turning off the console.
• The controller features a ‘share’ button which means gameplay can be instantly uploaded to Facebook and video streaming sites.
• The “PlayStation App” will enable iPhone, iPad, and Android based smartphones and tablets to become second screens
• PlayStation 4 Eye – 1280 x 800 camera (Xbox Kinect style feature)

Overall the PlayStation 4 is a smart piece of kit, the biggest disappointment was the fact the console was absent from the press conference. However this means it will most likely get shown at E3 in June. We are looking forward to it, now its over to Microsoft.

The PlayStation 4 is scheduled to be on sale in December 2013.

Google Glass

Google have been developing their revolutionary augmented reality head-mounted display for quite a while now, with little being shown apart from the headset over the last few years.

Now they are trying to push the sales in a social campaign by asking the question, ‘What would you do if you had Glass?’. To enter the competition you have to answer in 50 words of less with #ifihadglass using Google+ or Twitter, photos can be used and a short 15 second video can also be included.

The main drawback is that this is only available to U.S residents, meaning we will just have to write our own #ifihadglass tweet:

‘#ifihadglass I would visit the Wonders of the World and compare them using Glass to show the originals compared to 2013’s Wonders of the World.’ – Pedrom Pourkashanian

‘#ifihadglass I would go to a new city where I couldn’t speak the language and try and get a date by the end of the day’ – Jonny Pennington

‘#ifihadglass I could finally be on time for stuff without getting lost for 2 hours’ – James Whitelock

So I pose this question to you… What would you do if you had Glass?

Find more details here – if you are in the US you can enter on Twitter or Google+

interflora DISAPPEARS

Last Thursday, Martin Macdonald broke the news that Interflora had effectively been ‘wiped off the face of the Internet.’ Google hit the flower delivery service with a penalty which saw it virtually disappear from the SERPs for prime keywords it was previously ranking #1 for, including its own brand name. The company was sitting at the top of the search results for search terms such as ‘flowers’, ‘flower delivery’ and ‘florist’, but now finds itself buried in the 5^th or 6^th page.

We can only speculate the full extent of Interflora’s bad behaviour, but it appears a long history of bad link building practices has caught up with them. A quick Link Detox showed over 70% toxic and suspicious links, this includes advertorials, link networks, web directories and paid blog posts on abandoned networks.

Reminder: Google’s guidelines on paid links that pass PageRank also apply to “advertorial” pages. See goo.gl/PhwsY for more info.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) February 22, 2013

Following this incident, last Friday Matt Cutts posted a polite reminder on Google’s Webmaster Central blog that selling links is naughty and can lead to a penalty. It will be interesting to see how, and if, Interflora recover from this nightmare, whether they move to a new domain or start a long and gruelling recovery process, it won’t be easy.

The post Digital RoundUP 25/02/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Welcome to a new feature from the PushON team, every Monday we will be putting our Digital RoundUP blog online. This is your chance to catch up on the news from the last 7 days within the digital sector.

Mailbox Email App Release 

To start the week off, we were given the opportunity to test out the latest Mailbox app to be released on the iPhone.

After reading the article in Mashable we signed up for the app using the reservation system they initially set up. Once the app was released onto the app store we were up and running within 24 hours in the queue, starting at 6,000 with 600,000+ people behind, all waiting to see what the hype around the app was about. Due to this long drawn out process we heard mixed opinions from people about having to wait this long to use an app, with Arj in the office starting at around 950,000 and only just passing 600,000 today (some 7 days later).

The app is great for Gmail users as it instantly encourages you to tidy up your inbox, sorting through all the archived emails and spam in one go. When starting up, I was prompted with the information that I had 1,500 unread emails (I’m blaming the iPhone Mail app for this). After a few hours sorting through all the emails, I was informed that within ‘Settings‘ you could change the ‘Badge Count‘ to ‘Show 1 for new messages‘, a quick fix for those who don’t have the time to trawl through the 100′s of unread emails that have been archived through the iPhones original ’Mail‘ app.

Another useful tool built into the ‘Settings‘, is the Snoozes option, where you can Start your day at say 8:00 AM, Start the weekend at 10:00 AM and End your day at 6:00 PM to ensure that you are not overrun with constant notifications once you are out of work hours.

Overall, the app is the perfect alternative to the iPhone’s built in Mail app and provides some stiff competition and potential features for iPhone to mull over if they want to improve their services. The ease of swiping right to save or delete and swiping left to archive or remind yourself at a later date is a real dream to use and it will have you swiping from right to left all day.

We give this app a 4 out of 5, if you didn’t have to wait to use it then we would give it 5 out of 5.

Download Mailbox here and get to the back of the queue!

Lego forces management to sit social exams

Lego’s director of social media Lars Silberbauer said that “everyone in a company needs to get what it is to be social”.

Anyone who uses social media at Lego were already subjected to a development programme. Participants undertake a day-long course which culminates in a theoretical and practical exam.

Silberbauer emphasised the value of social media;

“We have four ways of creating value out of creating engagement,” he said. “Increasing sales, becoming more efficient in our marketing, building brand affinity and protecting our brand via social media.”

Yandex passes Bing to become 4^th Largest Search Engine

Yandex (the Russian search engine) surpasses Microsoft’s Bing on the number of monthly search queries worldwide. Bing did 4.477 billion queries and Yandex did 4.844 billion, although both were eclipsed by Google with 114.73 billion queries and a 65.2% market share.

In third place was the Chinese search engine Baidu, so what does this all mean?

Put simply, the audience growth in Russia is on an upward trajectory whereas in the Western markets it has somewhat stagnated. 2013 could prove to be Bing’s toughest year.

The post Digital RoundUP 18/02/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

NFC, or Near-Field Communication technology, has been somewhat of a buzzword in the mobile market in the past 18 months. It is clear that the technology, known predominantly for mobile payments, is an opinion-divider and no one is really sure of its future. Are marketers underestimating the potential of NFC marketing?

So what is NFC?

NFC uses short range wireless frequencies to securely transfer data between NFC-enabled devices by simply tapping them together (technically they only need to be in close proximity, but tapping is way cooler).

NFC is not a new technology, in fact, the first NFC-enabled phone was released back in 2006, but it’s never really found a role or purpose until recently. The financial industry has adopted the technology to roll out mobile payment systems, with Visa, Mastercard and American Express all signing up. But a lot of retailers have been reluctant to implement it. A study by M for Mobile suggests that things will change in 2015 when NFC handset penetration reaches 51 percent.

nfc in marketing

The jury is still out as to whether or not NFC mobile payments will take off, but what about NFC marketing?

It seems a lot of marketers are waiting for Apple to make NFC mainstream, we were all expecting the iPhone 5 to incorporate the technology but Apple decided against it. But does Apple still decide what the next trend is? 2012 saw its UK smartphone lead slashed as Samsung doubled its market share to 24 percent, just 4 percent behind Apple. Android also increased its lead over iOS, claiming nearly half of the market compared to Apple’s 28 percent. Many of the latest Android devices come equipped with NFC chips, and Samsung especially is pushing NFC.

NFC holds some great marketing opportunities for businesses with tech savvy customers, it allows users to simply tap their phone on a poster to trigger a voucher, website address or download. Movie companies could implement NFC on film posters which users tap to view the trailer. A coffee shop could have an NFC point at the counter that automatically checks customers in on Facebook whilst they’re waiting for their coffee. A beer brand could distribute NFC-encoded beer mats to pubs which punters can tap to take them to a promotional website or video. Or how an NFC poster outside a restaurant that puts its menu, phone number and address on users’ phones. You could even have an NFC business card that associates can just tap with their phone to get all of your contact details. The possibilities are vast.

NFC marketing is effective because it’s interactive. Instead of force-feeding consumers marketing messages, brands are enticing them to interact, communicate and engage. Users that see these NFC tags will want to tap their phone on it to see what happens, they don’t see it as an advert they see it as a personal discovery.

QR codes never really revolutionised the industry the way many people thought, and maybe marketers feel NFC is going down the same route. But QR codes were fiddly, confusing and temperamental. The process of interacting by tapping your phone on something is simple, quirky and fun.

Another avenue for NFC is loyalty schemes. We all hate rummaging through the dozens of loyalty cards in our wallet trying to find the appropriate one whilst the queue behind us gets longer and the sales clerk grows more impatient. Some companies have already rolled out this functionality including Orange, EAT and Starbucks. Besides the obvious incentive for customers, loyalty schemes are a great way for organisations to gather data on consumer behaviour.

So I guess now I need to sum up and provide some kind of definitive conclusion. Is NFC a great tool for marketers to interact and engage with consumers? Yes. Is it going to be a guaranteed, runaway success? No. The truth is that NFC faces some challenges; educating consumers, increasing NFC mobile penetration and getting all concerned parties on board. Only time will tell, but getting your ducks in a row now and being the first in your industry to launch an NFC marketing campaign could just be a risk worth taking.

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