The Year Of Thinking Dangerously.

And so we end the year as we started it, amazed that stuff like this gets made. Huge amounts of money spent on two of my pet hates - name changes and celebrity endorsement - tactics that pander to the egos of executives and agencies alike while doing little for genuine differentiation.

Worse still, this is happening in insurance, that most commodified of industries that has focussed on price competition, that suffers from many complaints and that could still be something very different. It's a service that makes a huge impact at a time of high emotion and peril.

What more could a business want in the way of attentive users and what better chance to make them passionate about you by acknowledging that insurance is, at heart, in the emergency service business? None of that will follow from unified group names or irrelevant celebrities and, as the You Tube comments show, people don't like the huge amount of money they're throwing at it in a time of economic downturn.

It's lazy, standard thinking and lazy thinking has got so many sectors in trouble in 2008. Lazy thinking is not going to work in 2009. 2009 has to be the year of thinking dangerously.

Pick N Mix Is Not A Strategy.

When Woolworths finally went bankrupt, a lot of people nostalgically bemoaned the passing of an institution and recalled making personally important purchases there decades ago (usually records or pick n mix).

When Woolworths finally went bankrupt, a lot of people realised that they hadn't been there for years and recalled that they didn't really know what they sold.

When Woolworths finally went bankrupt, quite a lot of people who did shop there recalled how they sold the best value children's clothing on the high street. But who knew that? Could Woolworths' salvation have lain in becoming the best children's clothes store in town? We'll never know.

Because Woolworths used to stand for something in people's minds, but increasingly tried to stand for everything by selling a wide variety of unremarkable products and, inevitably, customers drifted away.

Ultimately, it didn't stand for anything and ultimately it no longer exists. Here endeth the lesson.

Online Advertising Needs A Rationale.

..one of the main reasons for this is that advertisers and publishers are not always using the right measures to analyze advertising effectiveness. With average click rates on display ads falling under 0.1%, the correct metric to use is clearly NOT the click.

The click may well not be the correct metric to use. But the fact that click rates have fallen so low is not the justification for such a statement. The online advertising business really has to get its act together.

Relatively Good Isn't Good Enough.

In 1817, David Ricardo wrote about comparative advantage and the mathematical proof that, regardless of your productive capacity, you could improve your community wealth by specialising and trading.

In basic terms, it tells even the most advanced producer to focus on that which they are best at producing and to exchange any surplus production for whatever else they need.

The corollary of this is that even the worst, most inept producers can exploit a comparative advantage by specialising in producing that which they are least bad at producing. They will improve their wealth (at least, marginally) by trading but, being inept, they are not going to get rich.

It was therefore surprising last night to hear Lord Mandelson (Britain's Minister for Business) give a speech outlining his ideas for a new policy of industrial activism in which he constantly referred to the need to identify those areas in which this country has a comparative advantage. Not once did he refer to sustainable competitive advantage.

The point is this - comparative advantage is all about looking at your competitors and trying to stay ahead of them via benchmarking and other unadventurous tactics. Competitive advantage is all about focusing on customers and being absolutely as good as you can be.

It is entirely possible to have a comparative advantage and still be the worst performer in a category. That is a lousy basis for an individual business, let alone a national industrial policy. Remarkable is not relative.

Frameworks For People.

Last week I heard Lord Rogers exude cultural and moral leadership in discussing his philosophy of architecture and urban design. His description of cities as "frameworks for people" seemed to me to be a good way to think about any product or service.

The Downside Of Over-Delivering.

The mantra says under-promise and over-deliver. But over-delivery lies in the eye of the customer and not in yours.

For example, if you say your estimated delivery day is Thursday, delivering on Wednesday is not great service if your customer comes home to find a failed delivery note.

You may well have gone the extra mile in respect of your normal performance. However, if it's not something that the customer appreciated then you weren't just wasting your time, you were potentially wasting theirs and that's unforgiveable.

How To Make Them Talk About You.

It’s simple and yet seemingly oh so difficult. Give people something that makes their life richer, that does this simply and intuitively and, most importantly of all, does it in a way that doesn’t frustrate.

Avoid feature creep, avoid taking up too much of their time (that scarcest of resources) and avoid causing irritation.

Do that and you find that people are hard-wired to talk about this thing that gives them pleasure.

Sebuah Curahan Hati

Sekali lagi saya merasa sedih. Beberapa waktu yang lalu saya sempat merasa gembira saat ada dua rekan kuliah saya yang tertarik untuk minta di instalasikan Linux di notebook miliknya. Ternyata masalahnya gara-gara OS Windows-nya terserang virus. Masalah klasik. Saya pun langsung getol mencari paket-paket tambahan untuk agar bisa menambah fungsionalitas dan appereance Linux, dalam hal ini khusus paket untuk Ubuntu 8.04. Saya men-download paket Crossover, paket tema gOS, paket tema hijau, w32codecs, dan lain-lain. Tujuan saya hanya satu, ingin membuat rekan saya terkesan dengan Linux dan menjadi benar-benar tertarik dengan Linux. Selain itu saya juga sudah siap dengan repositori ekstra Ubuntu hasil meng-copy dari rekan saya yang lain yang mempunyai DVD-nya.

Setelah saya sangat siap untuk melakukan instalasi penuh Linux pada notebook rekan, sungguh agak mengecewakan, rekan saya tiba-tiba mengurungkan niatnya begitu saja untuk menginstalasi Linux gara-gara masalah yang bagi saya sangat sepele. Rekan saya merasa sayang kehilangan space Hard Drive-nya yang sekitar 10 GB untuk dipakai tempat instalasi Ubuntu. Ya Tuhan! Tampaknya rekan saya belum benar-benar tertarik dengan Linux, dan masih menganggap Linux sebagai sistem ecek-ecek atau mainan belaka. Sistem untuk ber-oprek ria bagi para hacker atau pun cracker. Saya jadi tersadar kembali, nampaknya pandangan rekan saya adalah pandangan secara umum pengguna komputer di negeri kita, masih sangat menyepelekan Linux. Entah kenapa, tiba-tiba saya merasa sangat sakit hati dan tidak terima. Saya jadi emosional. Bukan masalah apa-apa, tapi kenapa begitu banyak orang masih begitu naif-nya terhadap sebuah fenomena, sebuah kenyataan tentang adanya sebuah sistem yang benar-benar handal dan bisa dipercaya? Apakah ini karakter bangsa kita? Sementara kita selalu terbuai dengan nikmatnya menggunakan software proprietary bajakan. Semakin hari, dengan bangga kita memamerkan kemampuan kita dengan menggunakan fasilitas ilegal.

Yah, bisa jadi saya memang kecewa. Saya memang kecewa. Rupanya saya jadi lupa, bahwa begitu banyak pemrogram komputer di seluruh dunia, dengan sukarela setiap waktu mengembangkan, memperbaiki, dan menciptakan program-program serta fungsionalitas baru untuk Linux. Sementara saya yang hanya tinggal memakai dan memperkenalkan kepada pengguna komputer lain, sudah merasa tidak sabar dengan stigma masyarakat tentang Linux. Saya tahu, seperti yang sering saya bicarakan, Linux bukan sekedar sistem baru yang handal, tapi Linux adalah sebuah fenomen sosial humanistik. Kita tak akan pernah lupa dengan slogan Ubuntu : Linux For Human Beings. Linux untuk umat manusia. Hampir semua pengguna Linux di manapun, tertanam di dada mereka, gemuruh rasa bangga dan bahagia karena dengan setia menggunakan sebuah sistem operasi berlogo Penguin, yang dicipta, dan kembangkan, serta disebarkan dengan semangat berbagi dan cinta.

Marketing Begins Upstairs.

In a recent Seth Godin post, he draws the distinction between making and taking statements. The latter are approaches aimed at stealing market share, the former are designed to create new markets and as he rightly points out are distinguished by a company taking a stance and standing for something.

I'd go further than that. I think it emphasises my often-stated belief of the synonymity of marketing and corporate strategy. You can't stand for something if you only consider it at the promotional stage - that way lies greenwash etc.

By any proper definition, marketing includes product development. But ideally that follows from strategy. Marketing is not a department. A true marketing perspective has to permeate every element of the boardroom. It doesn't and that's where so many problems start.

Creative Commons.

I've never bothered to fill out a social networking profile beyond the bare minimum but if I had, then Warren Zevon, Carl Hiaasen and David Letterman would all have featured. So I knew already that the three were intertwined in real life - even though I came to each of them individually and by unconnected routes.

But reading Zevon's biography, I was surprised to see how many other people I like were also part of his life at some time. In similar vein, I'm frequently discovering that people who've become friends turn out to have a read the same obscure business book as I did years before we met.

I don't know what this means or how it happens, but it's not coincidence.

Is Advertising Immortal?

There are a lot of advertising-funded business models around.

If we can just build a community, then advertisers will want to reach them. Will they?

If we undercut more expensive advertising media, we'll have a competitive advantage. Will you?

If we don't charge for this, our audience will accept that they have to watch some ads in lieu of payment. Even if they did, would an advertiser really be interested in reaching a bunch of freeloaders?

It's amazing how many people who talk of disrupted markets, new paradigms and constant change are so wedded to old-world solutions. Change does not discriminate. If your marketplace has changed, then all bets are off. Not just the ones you don't have to make.

Customer Loyalty And The Pareto Tyranny.

Customer loyalty is much prized and much misunderstood. The obsession with it is such that companies often confuse habit for loyalty. They see their healthy sales figures and believe they have loyal followers rather than habitual customers. They believe this right up until the point when a competitor disrupts their market and their "loyalists" suddenly jump ship.

Last week, at an airline innovation forum, I also saw that this leads to customers misinterpreting loyalty. They were heavy users, they were anointed by loyalty schemes and they were not satisfied. They had a sense of entitlement derived from the belief that their perceived loyalty should be rewarded.

But are they really loyal or are they merely conditioned by habit and the switching costs implicit in reward schemes? Haven't they essentially made their purchase decisions of their own volition? Haven't they decided that this was the best value available to them? Shouldn't that be enough? They've assigned their lazy loyalty and if they didn't think it worthwhile wouldn't they have moved on?

Apparently not. These customers felt the key to the airline's future was to serve them, the heavy users, better. And many businesses feel that too - citing a bastardised confluence of Pareto and the idea that it costs more to get a new user than to retain an existing one.

The latter is technically true, but if it leads to customers expecting special bonuses then it's not far from competing solely on price. If they say they want more for the same price, it's not very different from saying they want the existing offer for less and, as we know, if you compete on price you're saying you don't really value your offering.

This is the heart of the loyalty conundrum and the received wisdom that companies should focus on the 20% who provide 80% of their profits. There can be no argument about focusing on keeping them happy by providing the best product/service but that should be a given for all customers. It's smarter still to exploit their "loyalty" and profitability by trying to sell them ancillary products and services which will contribute to the growth of a business.

But how much extra profitability can be wrung out of them? Too many businesses overlook the potential for real growth that lies in nurturing a proportion of the less profitable 80% towards true loyalty and greater profitability. If you can generate true loyalty in them via excellence of customer service, constant improvement or alliance with some shared belief, their sheer numbers mean they can have a significant impact on your bottom line.

Without knowing the actual numbers involved, I'd hazard a guess that an airline that could engender that in the back of the plane might reap rich rewards. Indeed if they could get economy passengers to pay a ticket price a couple of percentage points higher than that of the competition, they might, in fact, be doubling the profit margin of the largest part of their customer base.

The key to customer loyalty is not the creation of a pampered elite, it's about maximising the number of profitable customers.

Tips Mengedit HTML Blogspot

Jika kita mengotak-atik atau mengedit HTML blog kadang2 akan mengalami kesulitan, apalagi bagi yang masih agak pemula. Entah itu gak bisa nemu kode yang mau diedit lah, gak bisa disimpan karena error lah, Ada pesen error yang gak jelas lah, dan lah-lah yang lain, ya to...??? Nha trik dan tips kali ini akan mencoba gimana cara untuk mengatasi atau setidaknya mengurangi masalah "lah-lah" yang kadang2 atau sering terjadi tersebut.

Berikut ini beberapa tips untuk edit HTML bogger:

1. Backup Template

Membackup template ini penting karena jika terjadi hal-hal yang tidak dinginkan, misalnya blog jadi rusak maka kita bisa membuatnya seperti sediakala (sebelum rusak) jika kita sebelumnya sudah membackup template. Cara membackup template ini mudah. Cukup klik pada link "Download Full Template" lalu simpan file template di komputer kita. Kalo terjadi kesalahan yang tidak bisa kita atasi, kita tinggal upload aja file template tersebut.

2. Memberi Tanda Centang pada Kotak "Expand Widget Template"

Ini yang kadang2 dilupakan para "editor". Kalau kotak "Expand Widget Templates" tidak dicentang maka kode2 yang dicari kemungkinan tidak ditemukan. Tapi kadang2 hal ini tidak perlu dilakukan tergantung dari petunjuk tutorialnya. Makanya perhatikan baik2 tutorialnya kalo mau Edit HTML blog.

3. Tips Mempermudah Pencarian

Untuk mempermudah pencarian kode yaitu dengan meng-copy dulu kode yang mau dicari kemudian tekan "Ctrl+f" lalu masukkan kode yang dicopy tadi kedalam kotak yg muncul. Kalo misalkan kode yang dicari tidak muncul maka cobalah mencari sebagian dari kode tersebut. Misal mau mencari kode <p><data:post.body/></p> jika tidak ketemu maka cb carilah sebagiannya atau seperti ini data:post.body kalau sudah ketemu maka klik tombol next untuk melihat apakah ada kode lain yang sama untuk memastikan kode yang dikehendaki. Tapi tips ini sepertinya sulit dilakakukan jika menggunakan browser "Chrome" paling mudah jika menggunakan "Mozilla Firefox".

4. Tips Menghadapi Error Yang Muncul

Jika saat menyimpan hasil editan kemudian muncul pesan error, misal seperti ini:
We were unable to save your template
Please correct the error below, and submit your template again.
Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure.....
Maka hal yang harus kita lakukan adalah berusaha memahami pesan error tersebut. Kemudian kita cek kembali tutorial yang kita baca apakah langkah-langkah yang sudah kita lakukan bener2 sesuai dengan tutorialnya. kalau tidak yakin maka kita bisa mengulangi lagi tutorialnya dari awal dengan mengklik tombol "Clear Edit" terlebih dahulu.

Mungkin untuk masalah mengahadapi berbagai pesan error ini akan kita bahas lebih lanjut diepisode yang lainnya yang lebih spesifik.

Yak mungkin itu aja dulu tips-tips dalam pembahasan kali ini. Kita jumpa lagi di tips-tips berkutnya.

It's Spreadable Marketing, Not Viral.

In a New York bar last month, a (non-media) university friend of his asked the rest of the table to explain what Faris actually did - apart from use very long words that she didn't understand? We laughed, he pled guilty and we continued drinking.

This month, he's written an excellent post derived from his own thinking and his attendance of MIT's Future Of Entertainment conference. It gives us the simple language with which to clarify what viral marketing really is.

What we mean when something goes 'viral' is that LOTS OF PEOPLE CHOOSE TO PROPAGATE IT. It requires people to do something. Voluntarily. For their own reasons. It is not simply a new way to broadcast our messages through populations. It suggests we push, when in fact they pull

In other words, it's not interruptive advertising. As Henry Jenkins said at the conference, it's much more about gifting and

you don't put a catalog in a gift! That's gauche advertising. And viral advertising is basically this: "here's free media, give it into your friends as a gift, also it includes advertising!"

That doesn't work because, as Douglas Rushkoff said

"People don't engage with each other to exchange viruses; people exchange viruses as an excuse to engage with each other."

This is where marketing is going. This is where it has to go.

That's Not Marketing Either.

Actually, no. A brand should exist solely to meet a customer need and, if it does, then its needs and those of the customer will be congruent. A construct doesn't have independent needs.

On the other hand, a company does have independent needs and this suggestion is more a reflection of the interconnectedness of marketing and corporate strategy than anything else.

Successful corporate strategy connects the needs of customers to the need of a company to achieve a return on investment. Not vice versa.

Akhirnya Ganti Template Juga

Setelah sekian lama, akhirnya blog ini ganti template juga. Dari awal blog ni memang tidak pernah ganti template, paling cuma modifikasi dikit sana sini. Tapi sekarang, setelah menimbang2 dan melalui pemikiran yang panjang x lebar x tinggi, akhirnya diputuskan untuk mengubah template blog ini. Dan bagi yang berminat dengan template blog ini yang lama sekarang sudah bisa didownload. Silahkan DOWNLOAD DISINI untuk mendapatkan template lama blog ini. Tapi tentunya ada beberapa hal yang harus dimodifikasi, diantaranya yaitu :

1. Icon Kalender
Supaya icon kalendernya berfungsi (tidak "undefine") maka haru dirubah dulu format tanggalnya. Yaitu melalui "Setting-->Formatting" kemudian di bagian "Date Header Format" ganti dengan yg berformat "mm.dd.yyyy" misal (11.22.2008).

2. Ganti Tabs menu Horizontal
caranya yaitu masuk di EDIT HTML kemudian cari kata "horizontal tab", nha silahkan otak-atik didaerah situ untk mengedit menu2 horiizontalnya.

3. Ganti Isi Tabview
Caranya yaitu masuk di EDIT HTML kemudian cari kata "tab view", nha silahkan otak-atik didaerah situ untk mengedit isi dari tabview tersebut

Untuk edit2 yang lainnya silahkan diotak-atik sendiri.

Yup, gitu aja. Selamat tinggal templateku yang lama.

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.

Rightly or wrongly, I stopped looking at my blog stats well over a year ago. That way neurosis lies. But, via my RSS reader, I am informed of how many of you kindly subscribe using that tool.

Overnight, not having blogged in two days, I lost three subscribers and that got me thinking. Had I (or Loren Feldman) offended readers with my Motrin post, had I bored them into submission, had they just lost the blog-reading habit or had readers switched to another RSS system? I have no way of knowing.

And it's important to know why people don't want what you're offering. Not because you should shape it to every person's whim, but because it's as informative to understand people's aversion to your product/service as it is to understand their loyalty. Motrin's biggest failing was not being ready to deal with that aversion and thus not engaging with it.

Keeping your current customers happy is a crucial business skill, but your new customers (and thus growth) are people who don't yet use your product/service and who just might share the views of those who are leaving you. Do you bother to find out what those views might be?

The Shaky Foundations Of Neuromarketing.

That is the problem with all neuroscience. We don't really know what we are seeing when we watch the brain work. Is it the thing itself - the thought, the flash of insight - or just an aspect of it, the bark rather than the dog.

Professor Lawrence Parsons - Sheffield University.

Marketing Headache, Motrin-Style.

There has been a little kerfuffle in interweb land this past weekend. Most people won't have noticed it. But some people got quite excited because Motrin were very slow in reacting to the "noise" and didn't apologise and/or explain that they had been joking as quickly as they should.

The whole sorry saga is detailed here and includes what I had intended to be my only comment on the furore.

But I was forced to blog about it because of the intervention of the honeymooning Loren Feldman who gives an alternative perspective.

Criminalise Your Customers?

Tara pointed me to this story about a Dutch coffee-shop chain that

By continuously changing the names of their store networks to such things as OrderAnotherCoffeeAlready, BuyCoffeeForCuteGirlOverThere?, HaveYouTriedCoffeeCake?, BuyAnotherCupYouCheapskate and BuyaLargeLatterGetBrownieForFree...is able to both promote items as well as guilt patrons into realizing free WiFi really isn't

That's smart as far as it goes. But it's indiscriminately interruptive of all wi-fi users and, more importantly, guilt is not the primary emotion you want to engender in your potential customers.

Far better to focus on the wittier messages rather than the hard sell. Far better to seek to make the miscreants (not to mention all those freer-spending wi-fi users) feel part of the community and invested in the fate of the business. Far better in the long run and far more likely to cause them to return.


Addendum: In line with this downtime interaction spotted by Iain, they could also use their interruptions to seek positive opinions or poll their miscreants about why they're not buying coffee.

Cara Menghilangkan Tanda Tang dan Obeng

Sering aku ditanya tentang masalah ini. Yaitu tentang bagaimana cara menghilangakn tanda tang dan obeng yang muncul di blog kita. Bagi yang baru terjun didunia blog pasti ada yang bingung kenapa di blog mereka bisa muncul tanda tang dan obeng yang biasanya bisa digunakan untuk mengedit secara langsung untuk gadget2 atau element2 yang terpasang.

Sebenarnya itu bukan merupakan suatu masalah, karena tanda tersebut hanya muncul jika pemilik blog sedang login di account blognya dan hanya muncul di komputer orang tersebut. Jadi orang lain tidak bisa melihatnya. Dan kalau pemilik blog tersebut sudah "sign out" maka tanda tersebut tidak akan muncul lagi.

Jadi para blogger pemula gak usah khawatir ya ... :D

Dah, gitu ah aja tips dan trik kali ini. mo lanjutin tidur lagiiii......
:s :s :s :s

Speed Marketing (Geeks In A Crypt).

So, I found myself in a crypt full of geeks.

Theoretically, I was there to learn some more about cloud computing, but instead I got a lesson in bad marketing.

If you're allocated five minutes to present your thinking and insights, you can do one of two things. You can try to cram your regular half hour into the reduced time which involves subjecting your audience to a blur of slides and/or an avalanche of speed-reading.

Or you can acknowledge that five minutes is not thirty and tailor your presentation accordingly. Embrace the limitations that are set rather than see them as an inconvenience. You may not impart as much information, but at least it will be heard.

Missing The Bus.

So, let me get this right. I could buy a coffee for £3, but rather than do that I should buy one of your £3 coach tickets and travel to an unspecified location where I can then spend some more money to buy a coffee I could have bought some hours ago?

Isn't the point of travel to enable you to do something you couldn't do where you were? Isn't the point of this example that marketers should always ensure that they and their media contractors know what it is that they're selling?

Setting Domain di co.cc

Seperti yang sudah kita ketahui, bahwa co.cc adalah top level domain yang bisa kita dapatkan secara gratis. Kita bisa mengganti nama blog kita dari "http://namadomain.blogspot.com" atau "http"//namadomain.wordpress.com" (dll) menjadi "http://namadomain.co.cc" . Dengan co.cc kita bisa mengontrol DNS Records, A, MX, dan CNAME records, sehinga domain co.cc bukan hanya sekedar "URL Forwarding".
Berikut ini akan saya coba mengungkapkan tentang cara setting domain di co.cc:

Ada 3 tipe pengaturan di co.cc. Ketiganya memiliki fungsi tersendiri. berikut ini penjelasanya:

1. Managed DNS
Ini biasanya digunakan untuk sebuah web yang memerlukan web hosting dan mengharuskan untuk mengarahkan Name Server-nya ke hosting tersebut. Misal untuk membuat web di 000webhost, atau bisa juga untuk blog wordpress yg menggunakan hosting dari luar. Metode ini tidak cocok digunakan untuk blogger/blogspot yang menggunakan hosting default dari blogger/blogspot.
Cara setting untuk metode ini yaitu dengan mengisi pada kolom "Name Server 1 dan Name Server 2 dengan name server yg sesuai dengan hosting yang digunakan. Misal, bagi yang menggunakan hosting dari 000webhost maka untuk kolom "Name Server 1" disi dengan "ns01.000webhost.com" dan kolom "Name Server 2" disi dengan "ns02.000webhost.com". Kemudian klik tombol "Setup". Selesai

2. Zone Records
Zone records cocok digunakan bagi para pengguna blogger/blogspot. berikut ini cara setting untuk Zone Records

• Pada kolom "Host" isikan dengan nama domain yg sudah km daftarkan, misal "www.namadomain.co.cc" (jangan lupa dikasih "www")


• Untuk option "TTL" biarkan saja, gak perlu dirubah2


• Pada option "Type" pilih yang "CNAME"


• Untuk kolom "Value" isikan "ghs.google.com"

Sehingga akan seperti pada gambar dibawah ini:

Langkah selanjutnya yaitu merubah settingan di blogger/blogspot caranya begini:

• Login ke blogger/blogspot kemudian masuk ke menu "Setting-->Publishing"


• Kemudian pilih "Switch to: • Custom Domain


• Setelah itu klik pada "Already own a domain? Switch to advanced settings"


• Kemudian isikan nama domain kamu yang baru pada kolom "Your Domain".



• Selanjutnya klik tombol "Save Setting"

Selesai. Kalau berhasil (Settingnya sudah benar) maka domain kamu yang baru akan aktif dalam waktu antara beberapa jam sampai 2 hari. Jadi sabar aja menunggunya. Blog kamu akan tetap bisa diakses dengan melalui domain yang lama.

3. URL Forwarding
URL forwarding bisa digunakan untuk apa aja, bisa web ato blog. Tapi URL Forwarding ini hanya memforward domain yg baru (yang di co.cc) ke domain lama. Jadi domain lama akan 100% seperti semula tanpa ada perubahan apapun, cuma kita bisa mengakses web/blog kita dengan mengetikkan nama domain baru kita di browser. Jika menggunakan URL Forwarding maka yang terindex di google atau Search engine yang lain adalah tetap Domain kita yang lama.
Untuk setting URL Forwarding sangat mudah, kita hanya mengisikan data-data yang diminta dan disesuaikan dengan web/blog kita, seperti "Redirect to:, Page Title, URL Hiding, Meta Description dan Meta Keywords". Kita tidak perlu lagi mensetting domain di web/blog kita lagi.
Note: Metode ini tidak dianjurkan jika tidak terpaksa

Jadi kesimpulannya adalah:

• Jika kamu memakai layanan blogger/blogspot maka gunakanlah "Zone Records"


• Jika domainnya digunakan untuk web yg memerlukan hosting atau untuk wordpress maka gunakanlah "Manage DNS"


• Jangan menggunakan "URL forwarding" jika tidak terpaksa. Misal untuk untuk blog dari multiply yang tidak support custom domain.

Alone In The Crowd.

Marketers are increasingly trying and failing to inject social interaction into their activities. The key is to realise that something which seems social may not be social at all.

In this article about Sleeveface, one line stuck out.

"We know this one woman who got into it, and she used to do flash-mobbing. But she says you'd just turn up, do something funny and leave, so she didn't get to meet anybody. Sleevefacing is more social"

Too many markerters/advertisers think it's enough to turn up, do something funny and leave. It isn't.

Keputusan Terbaik

Ubuntu 8.10 ( Interpid ) sudah rilis. Sangat cepat, cuma berjarak 6 bulan dari Hardy ( 8.04 ). Kalau kita lihat distribusi yang lain pun, polanya hampir sama. Paling tidak 1 tahun sekali sudah rilis versi yang lebih baru. Bagi sebagian pengguna awal Linux, dan mungkin juga pengguna Linux lain, hal tersebut sangatlah membingungkan dan menggoda.

Jika OS komersial seperti Microsoft Windows, akan merilis versi barunya dalam jarak yang cukup lama ( sekitar 4 tahun ), maka kebanyakan distribusi Linux merilis versi terbarunya dalam jarak waktu yang sangat dekat. Hal tersebut, tentu cukup membingungkan, karena kita harus melakukan instalasi ulang setiap versi yang lebih baru dirilis. Kita harus memindah-mindah dulu data yang ber-gigabyte, intstalasi yang melelahkan. Lalu mana yang terbaik ?



Sebenarnya kalau kita review secara lebih detil, rilis versi baru hanya merubah satu hal : mengganti versi paket ( software ) yang ada dalam distribusi. Paket desktopnya (KDE, Gnome), paket aplikasi fungsional ( Office, Multimedia, Internet, dll ) dan paket dependensi dasar sistem. Kemudian, kalau kita review ke paket-paket tersebut, sebenarnya tidak ada perbedaan yang terlalu jauh antara versi paket dalam distribusi yang yang sebelumnya dengan yang baru dirilis.



Jadi, menurut hemat saya, adalah kurang efektif untuk selalu bergonta-ganti versi distribusi, apalagi gonta-ganti distribusi yang dipakai. Apalagi untuk penggunaan korporasi ataupun bisnis. Hal tersebut sangatlah tidak praktis dan tidak efisien ( membuang waktu dan biaya ). Jadi, langkah yang paling bijaksana adalah untuk menetapkan keputusan untuk menggunakan suatu versi distribusi tertentu untuk digunakan. Akan lebih baik kalau kita menggunakan versi yang mempunyai support sistem yang lama seperti versi LTS ( Long Term Support ) dari distribusi ubuntu.



Tentu saja akan ada pendapat "kan tinggal update lewat internet". Tentu saja akan saya jawab, seperti dalan posting saya yang lalu-lalu, bahwa internet masih mahal di Indonesia. Dan kalaupun mau mendownload manual lewat warnet adalah lebih tidak maksud akal.

Jadi intinya adalah, menurut pengamatan saya, tidak ada yang namanya ketinggalan fitur atau tehnologi yang signifikan dalan setiap versi distribusi. Katakanlah, kita seyogyanya mengganti versi distribusi kita setelah 2 tahun. Dan saat waktunya akan tiba, siap-siaplah untuk mengupdate sistem.

CD UBUNTU GRATIS

REPOSITORI UBUNTU

Pasang Widget Translator

Memasang widget translator atau "Penerjemah" pada blog banyak sekali gunanya. Translator ini berguna apabila ada pengunjung dari negara lain yang secara sengaja maupun tidak yang melihat blog kita dan tidak tahu bahasa kita maka mereka bisa menggunakan widget ini untuk menterjemahkannya kedalam bahasa yang mereka inginkan (tentunya yang sudah ada di widget ini). Widget ini sudah support untuk bahasa Indonesia. Dan kalo kamu mau, translator ini bisa juga untuk menterjemahkan tugas dari sekolah/kampus secara mudah. Dan hasilnya bisa lebih bagus daripada software transtool lho. Gimana? mau membuatnya? caranya mudah lho. Gini nih...

1. Login ke Blogger trus pilih menu "Layout" atau "Tata Letak"
2. Kemudian klik pada "Add Gadget" atau "tambah gadget=".
3. Lalu pilih HTML/Javascript"
4. Kemudian masukkan script berikut ini kedalamnya.

<script src="http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/translatemypage.xml&up_source_language=id&w=160&h=60&title=&border=&output=js"></script>

5. Kemudian simpan.

Coba sekarang lihat blogmu maka ada tampilan seperti ini :



Coba dites apakah translator tersebut bekerja dengan baik atau tidak.
Gimana? gampang kan...

Your Customer-Driven Future.

At the heart of the VRM philosophy is the intention to impel businesses to move away from a customer-focused approach and towards a customer-driven outlook. Some recent developments at Tesco.com (the online service of the UK's largest supermarket chain) provide an opportunity to clarify the distinction.

Customer-Focused

Tesco were the first UK supermarket to launch an online shopping site, but its initial iteration seemed to have simply cut and pasted their warehouse stock-lists into a template. Whereas a supermarket shopper would select the shelf for the category, identify their favoured brand and then select the size of product they wanted, hereyou had categories listed by size of product. You found yourself looking at a list of the various 250 ml aerosol deodorants and then the various 100 ml deodorants. An experience at complete variance with what you understood shopping to be.

I recall writing to the CEO and being told that things would get better and of course they did. But this was customer focus in action. Target those shoppers who might be net savvy and keep them in the fold by giving them a website as soon as possible regardless of its usability and the experience it offers them. Customer focus is about putting the passive customer in your cross-hairs and deciding when you squeeze the trigger.

Customer-Centric

Last week at the Microsoft PDC in Los Angeles, Tesco.com announced among other things that they had created software that enabled any online shopper to use their webcam as a barcode scanner when setting up their online shopping lists. That's all about making the process easier for the customer. It's about thinking about how the customer behaves and how you can make it easier and more agreeable for them. That's arguably a good definition of customer centricity.

But it's splitting hairs. Customer centricity is still not enough because the imposed passivity remains and the customer only gets what they're given and nothing that they've driven. Echoing Adriana's earlier post, Doc Searls twittered this week from a web 2.0 conference in London,


Customer-Driven

The key to customer-driven lies in the verb. There can be no doubt here, the user is in charge and actively directing the process.

In a move that really hints at the customer-driven future, Tesco.com also announced last week that they were opening up their API. By summer 2009 anyone will be able to create widgets and programs that can facilitate the use of the system. Many of those geeks will be existing customers who have had frustrations with the current system or who have identified ways that make the process easier for customers.

The outcome should be that customers will be able to drive how the service works for them, that Tesco.com will gain a richer knowledge of their needs, and that those customers will be better customers as true loyalty displaces habituation.

You can make as many proclamations as you like about being customer-focused or customer-centric, but do so in the knowledge that you are well behind the curve. In a collaborative, post-messaging world, your "focus" has to "centre" on creating a customer-driven business.


Bonus link: The guy from Tesco who made the announcements has a blog.

The iPod Generation Isn't A Generation.

While participating in a panel at Mondays's VRM conference, I made a comment about the need for all businesses to recognise that the iPod generation were accustomed to having an entirely personalised music experience and that this technologically-driven expectation would spread into every area of their life.

I was bemused by some of the audience's accusations about my use of a generational generalisation and their insistence that they were more technologically-aware than their kids. No doubt they are. For me, it was not the make up of the generation, but the behaviour that was the issue. The reaction, however, was based on traditional segmentation thinking which defines all "generations" as age-ranges.

The iPod generation is the first "generation/group" who've experienced iPods. They are purchase-defined, they are behaviourally-defined, but they are not age-defined. Indeed, I've always doubted that any segments really were.

It may be correct to infer that the younger members of that generation will have a greater sense of entitlement to personalisation because they have known nothing else. It is not correct to assume that the older ones think very much differently, both because technology is agnostic and not ageist and because that sort of thinking is predicated upon a chronological definition of generations.

If you insist on simplifying this complex world by putting individuals into boxes, then do so based on how they behave and how they think. Not on what it says on their birth certificate.


Image via kristabel.

Recommended Software Downloads

It's important to us to know what is the nice computer software that can be downloaded. Gadget Advisor is one of many site that provide info about it. We can find for some high quality best Windows software downloads. A list of applications that have been tested extensively such as best Firefox extensions also served as a comprehensive listing of the high quality software. When evaluating for recommendation, they are not only do consider the functionality and features of the application, but also test to ensure it works well. We can also get reviews info from some software such as review for Blaze Media Pro and other gadgets. Therefore, be sure to check back for updates periodically.