Whats Creative

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4LIThTB8Ww watch this, and you will no longer say Chinese are uncreative copycats.

Online Museums

Read and comment on : http://omcdesign.blogspot.com/2008/11/online-museum-what-is-difference.html

Guys we have a new project..

We have a call from Turkey about a new project, the company has sent us all the details about their new franchising idea, it seems really cool. They are thinking to get in both Turkish and Russian market at the same time by their new concept, and they need a little help about their cart and store designs which must be prepared for malls at the beginning. So I ll send details to design team about designs after presenting the details on the meeting. And for the Business Development team they also need the brand identity and a 360 degree marketing plan. They already have financial plans and locations prepared. Since they haven't launched their idea, I am not giving the rest of the information till Tuesday's meeting... But if there is anyone who is not busy for this weekend, I can send you the details to be prepared before meeting...I forgot to write, by the way we need a Russian partner urgently for the Russian market launch plan..So if you have any candidate in your mind please keep contact with me ASAP...

The Funniest thing which sO face with till that day :)

Some companies are not as smart as their site name and even they do not know what the business partnership is, and even the responsible of the companies might by forgetting a speech in their office could blamed us by stealing their ideas although we have spoken about partnership models, I have written him to correct their misunderstanding but till that time still they have not turned back with a positive response..The funniest thing about him is he has a small mind and likes to show off so he has found to sO a name as Stealing Oriented and sent that to all his friends in Stockholm who I met in their office to humiliate me, the mail is in Turkish so I am not posting here since you will not be able to understand any single word of it.. Isn't it interesting also to you, people have begun to be afraid of us just after one year :) As Cagri already said; let's just forget about that thing, and concentrate on our ongoing projects.. So we are just erasing that dogs thing from our next meeting agenda forever, do not even think about that site guys...

Guys check the site and give some feedback on the business model

Hundsmart.se if you give positive feebacks we can localize these for proper countries by making translations and transliterations. There are many examples: http://www.dogster.com/ http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/66785/social_networking_for_pets.html http://www.pet-files.com/ http://www.mydogspace.com/ http://www.fuzzster.com/ //note that I (Onur) edited your previous posts.. I actually believe as well that it is a good idea to port the business model, and it was even better to make a partnership, perhaps next time we make a post we should give more detail so that other companies and people who are reading our blog can exactly duplicate the business model, in a mannered way.. Actually after seeing the other examples, I believe we should definetely not make this as it is easy, and cheap work with no creativity or nothing needed, as it was catster and dogster.com who put the creativity in coming with this idea, so shortly, huntsmart, who ported the idea from USA to Sweden and then blamed us (even us did not do anything, even we did not find / register names for any markets), is simply funny :)

How to do in busines... in the world?

Try http://www.doingbusiness.org/ .

Window Shopping at its e-best.

Just check: http://www.windowshop.com/

Nice presentation

This is a nice presentation of statistical data. Very interesting from different points of view.

http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

Episode Anime is finally out

sO company proudly presents, Episode Anime is finally out for you to test and improve, for the first time in human history you can actualy keep track of Anime's you watch in one place and you can share them with your friends.

Please send us your feedbacks and tell how you like it : http://www.episodeanime.com Registration is free, and easy!

Yes, Yes, Yes, I will buy,

1. A telemarketing company increased phone calls to its 800 line by changing part of its script from “Operators are waiting, please call now” to “If operators a busy, please call again.” Thus, the impression changed from idle operators waiting for the phone to ring because sales weren’t great to operators too busy to handle all the business. This is called the principle of social proof: When people are uncertain, what others are doing influences their behavior. This is why we think restaurants with a long line to get in must serve good food.

2. Researchers found that the more options offered in a company retirement plan, the fewer people participate in that plan. Similarly, when experimenters offered only six flavors of jam, 30% of the people who approached the display bought any jam. When the experimenters offered 24 flavors, only 3% bought some. Therefore, instead of trying to offer every color, size, and price point of gizmo, you might want to reduce the choices to increase sales.

3. When Williams-Sonoma offered a new, improved, and more expensive bread maker, it found that sales of the original model doubled. This is because people like to make compromise choices that fall between the minimum they need and the maximum they can afford. Suppose you’re a restaurant. Should you list the expensive wines or the cheap wines first? Probably the expensive ones because it will cause people to order the less pricey ones.

4. Which of these two questions is more likely to help you garner influence? “Who can help me here?” or “Whom can I help?” The answer is the latter. This is the concept of paying things forward. Most people have a deep sense of reciprocation and gratitude–indeed, most societies are built on these concepts. Hence, when you help people first, most will help you in return.

5. In an experiment, waiters gave candy with the restaurant bill to diners in three different ways: one piece of candy for each guest; two pieces of candy to each guest; and one piece of candy for each guest followed by walking away from the table and then turning around to give a second piece of candy to each guest. The results were: 3.3% increase in tips for one piece of candy; 14.1% increase for two pieces of candy given at once; and 23% increase in tips for the walk away and return with a second piece scenario. What’s this tell you? Unexpected and personalized gifts are powerful motivators.

6. The authors of the book were able to almost double the likelihood that someone would donate to the American Cancer Society by adding five words to their pitch. The standard pitch was “Would you be willing to help by giving a donation?” The pitch that was twice as effective contained these additional five words: “Even a penny will help.” Apparently asking for a little step in the direction you want is highly effective.

Via http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1336066125111443243

Barcode Battler

A crazy game, however, it is inspiring to see that "many people check barcodes of everyday items to see what they will relate to". see here.

Another edit, I just found the commercial:


Oh, and here is a Video of review:

Design Issues

Going too fast by the support of 20 years experience..

Guys this company is an American (how interesting right :)) company as we got use to.. I think it will be perfect to understand their case, cause their story is nowadays No:1 in the US business world. They have enlarged their operations for or 5 times just in 2 years by using their name and popularity, since they were not a public company they have also used negative profit tricks to bargain.. But they havent experienced yet the AmeriGlobal resession crisis.. So just in two months they announced their bankruptcy... Who are they ? Check this out...
And this is the story..

Being REAL innovative...

Anyone will join the company must check that out...

This is a really really good traffic generator...

By the way do not care about the URL :) we still need designers, cream is just to enlarge the logo :)

What is RSS

We do not want internet to be like this however..

If you watched the video, did you notice the girl? why do you think she is there?! marketting?

Hacking a Business Interview?!

Real good design..

Nice business cards, they can inspire their owners, and consumers as well.. Check it out..

viral advertisement campaign

here is one: they are selling pain killers and then come up with the following idea:

Would you like to buy real.me domain for $19.95 ? You can if you hurry,

https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/tlds/me.asp?ci=12389&domainToCheck=real%2Eme&me%5Fsearch=1

Lets make suggestions and buy some good names, we can catch the sunrise period

Your online presence

Folks at http://www.retaggr.com/ are doing something similar to what we are doing

You Need a Profile Card

• Tell the world who you are with an interactive business card
• It pops up near your comments and photos on other sites
• Merge all your widgets, and enable people to connect with you

You just need to will it...

Than comes a hardworking job and the almost result... Check this out..

Made in Japan!!! Where we lost it???

You can check the desperateness of Japanese Government and consumer electronic industry while watching Apple's Iphone launch...Check it out..

Guy Kawasaki

I do not want to just copy paste his blog here, so I suggest you all to add his blog to your RSS feeds, http://blog.guykawasaki.com/

If you do not know how to add to your RSS program, or do not even know what RSS is please make a google search, it is really a great tool.

Contact me to do a similar event

"Check out the Silicon Valley Moms "Summer Road Trip '08." Five mommy bloggers are driving across the United States in a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid. Other sponsors include Yahoo!, CBS News, WeightWatchers, Six Apart, and Zune. The moms describe it as "5 blogging moms, 7 days without kids, 1 car without carseats, 2,000 miles to drive."

The promotion is an example of great marketing at low cost. Something to think about when you're coming up with marketing ideas. By the way, if you work for Audi, Porsche, or Mercedes, contact me to do a similar event."

The text above was copied from Guy Kawasaki's Blog, what a nice and cheap way to find a job. So, if you work for yourself contact and contribute sO blog to do the same..

Labeling a product as "new" may increase its sales

According to a neuroscience article, humans genetically look for new things, thus "labeling it new - will increase sales" !

Dr. Bianca Wittman of University College London found that making novel choices activates the ventral striatum of the brain. This area is associated with rewarding behavior. Thus, labeling a product as "new" may increase its sales because of this brain wiring. Also, familiar brands also cause higher levels of brain activation, so the perfect pitch may be a new product from an established brand. Hmm, "Apple iPhone," maybe? Read more about the study here at the Neuroscience Marketing blog.

Read wholo story here.
URL: http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/the-power-of-new.htm

What a (WTF) Business

http://www.nextdayid.com/ this is a "FAKE ID" company, I was checking out information of id etc for our userspective project and come up with this.

Nice readings

I've been thinking that it would be valuable to share here some interesting sources we follow on daily basis. I've just realized that most of the stuff I read is in polish so not of much value for you but here is a intresting blog I came across today - just for starters.

http://www.beyondvc.com/

My Deco

Guys check that out, especially for the furniture project you will see a really good and earning example here.

Web Form Design Patterns: Sign-Up Forms

Smashing Magazine, has a nice text on "Registration forms", It is good for any of us who are interested in usability when designing web applications and services, here is a part of it:

The main objective of the survey was to provide designers and developers with some intuition of how effective web forms are designed in practice; we also wanted to present some guidelines of how a user-friendly web form can be achieved.

Read more

Ciaooo guys

Have a nice weekend, and sleep well :)

Guys, is there anyone who has a really innovative social network idea...

This
is a real unknown thing, i always think like social network thing is already done, but there are many different companies who are fighting in that field... So maybe we can develop something innovative enough to beat some of those networks in the future.. ?????? So anyone, any idea???

Mini-Laptops look like the Next Big Electronics Change

Will Mini Laptops push Dell and HP to the brink if the become the acceptable home and/or office computer?

Full article: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_24/b4088032594249.htm?chan=search

the question is, how can we use the mini laptops / ultra portables to create new businesses?!

PS: I have one of these, it is really convinient and you can browse the web anywhere anytime,
what I want for example is to order food, goods etc to be delivered to me, find a cab, locate a hotel etc, and I can do all these with this little thing.. I have an idea that I will talk about at the meeting..

Killer Start-ups!

Hi all,

I wanted to share that the website http://www.killerstartups.com/ has a lot of new content and ideas, I suggest all of you to register to its RSS and keep a track of what people are investing in, the new trends in online business investments etc.

Foreign Business means Being Local

A story of How two U.S. entrepreneurs cracked the Moroccan property market.

This article by CNN discusses the story of two american fellas that established a business in Morocco, and how they interact with the local market.

As expected they became Morroccians themselves;

So all the point is: "You need to be local to sell the local", and then "be local for global".

http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/22/smallbusiness/rocking_casbah_morocco.fsb/index.htm

Golden Spiders from Ireland

http://www.goldenspiders.ie

maybe we can be one of them one day, so we need to check that kind of web awards..

Being Clear and transparent

I like their approach to bugs on the site, so it can be really nice for us if we can also apply that..

http://buzz.blogger.com/

got Time? check out some map applications

all together at: http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/

A 19$m company?! Not a big deal.

" The real estate search engine and community Trulia, has released Snapshots, a new interactive housing map that is a bit more fun than it should be."

Trulia was founded in 2004 and has raised nearly $18 million in funding, with investors including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners.

http://www.trulia.com/

This is a 19$m company, not a big deal, we are fast and more innovative! (need more people!! for projects in hand)

Rent or Buy Calculator.

Indeed the question is, how can we implement such for our projects, calculators are always on demand.



"The New York Times Rent or Buy Calculator compares the cost of renting versus buying your home to determine which is a better money move in the long run. Give it your monthly rent, the projected price of buying a house, mortgage rate, and property tax, and it'll determine after how many years buying is better than renting (if at all). If you live somewhere like Los Angeles or New York and your name doesn't end with Rockefeller, the calculator is a little depressing"

Full Article: http://lifehacker.com/393781/rent-or-buy-calculator-helps-you-decide-which-is-best

Google Earth on Map, Not Just a map!, rotate it 3d

We can put the 3d of a house (for focusabacus), or hotel (for our future tourism portal) or anything on map! ..

"Website developers are now able to embed 3D maps, which can be modified using Google’s JavaScript API to add KML data, draw 3D buildings, attach callbacks, and more. The entire embed is powered by a special Google Earth Browser Plugin that end users must install. Unfortunately, it’s only available for Internet Explorer and Firefox users on Windows."

Read Full at http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/28/google-earths-3d-goodness-comes-to-the-browser/

%3 growth for the first time since october

In US real estate new home prices for the first time since october (after that mortgage crisis) increased %3 this month according to the Reuters Business.

From Donald Trumps University

90% of the world's millionaires made their wealth in real estate.

There's a lot of money to be made in real estate, but without sufficient knowledge and experience, you put yourself at financial risk.

For more than 40 years, Donald Trump has successfully turned real estate into real money.

The Url is dead...

The URL is dead...LONG LIVE SEARCH!
Posted Thursday, May 22, 2008 by Chris Baggott
In a great post today from ReadWriteWeb called "The URL Is Dead...Long Live Search." My favorite quote:


".....it would seem that long, unwieldy URLs will become even more cumbersome on devices with limited screen size. That makes search even more important, and driving consumers to your product via search seems like a safe bet."

Basically it talks about a big brand (SpecialK) that ran a TV commercial and asked the viewers to search rather than remember a URL. It's a great point, but I still think misguided execution.

The strategy was a big high production TV commercial that I'm sure drove a huge spike in sight visits to download a diet plan. I don't know the exact number of visitors, or how many people actually downloaded the plan.

What I do know, is there are Thousand of keywords associated with diet and weight loss and millions of searches....and those searches happen every day. It's frustrating to me that an old media 'campaign' like this gets so lauded when if SpecialK or any big brand would simply invest a fraction of the resources that goes into one commercial into a corporate blogging strategy designed for SEO they would be able to accomplish a couple of significant goals:


A blog program designed for Search Optimization will throw a very wide net out and attract lots of qualified traffic over a wide range of keywords. Enterprise blogging is one of the best ways to drive SEO.
Real Engagement. The Edelman Trust Barometer for 2008 tells us that the most trusted sources for information are "people like me". What corporate blogging does is allow organizations to create a lot of content written by real human beings....when a searcher finds you, they find 'someone like them' and the result is significantly higher conversion.
Compendium makes easy to use blogging software for small businesses to retailers and serving the worlds largest enterprise applications...all delivered SaaS.

New Trend For Companies

The more the world is globalized, the more the companies are integrated. The following article tells about the new trend how the companies collaborate together so as to achieve and compete.

Take a look so that we can compete:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/technology/25proto.html?ex=1369454400&en=054b9dd9477087ff&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

News Cut & Prepared For You

The http://www.flowww.com/ changes the way we read news and I really like that somebody is getting the best ones for me from flickr, techcrunch, financial times and so on.

So, while you are drinking your own coffee americano (che fa schiffo :)) take a look at the web site.

why have user evaluations or reviews?

Importance of Reviews and User Evaluations

According to JupiterResearch, 77 percent of online shoppers use reviews and ratings when purchasing.

Reviews drive 21 percent higher purchase satisfaction and 18 percent higher loyalty, according to Foresee Results.

In a study of 2,000 shoppers, 92 percent deemed customer reviews as "extremely" or "very" helpful, finds eTailing Group.

BizRate found 59 percent of users considered customer reviews to be more valuable than expert reviews.

In a CompUSA-iPerceptions study, 63 percent of consumers indicated they're more likely to purchase from a site if it has product ratings and reviews.

86.9 percent of respondents said they'd trust a friend's recommendation over a critic's review, while 83.8 percent said they'd trust user reviews over a critic, according to MarketingSherpa.

92.5 percent of adults said they regularly or occasionally research products online before buying in a store, found BIGresearch.

According to Keller Fay, 63 percent of all WOM is positive. Across all Bazaarvoice clients, 80 percent of products rate 4 or 5 stars out of 5.

Importance of DMOZ

Inclusion in DMOZ.org is hard and is in most of the cases a one time chance, DMOZ.org is really important as most search engines give alot importance to sites included in dmoz; indeed it is primary source of relevant information for all the search engines. In the picture above, you can see that (Green Lines), meaning supply of information.

Welcome!

Hello Stella D'oriente!