RFID magazine links online and offline

The first internet-connected magazine is using technology within its printed pages to create an innovative way of linking readers to its online content.

Using an RFID tag buried within its pages, the French entertainment magazine Amusement has collaborated with RFID specialists Violet to lead readers to exclusive online content that is otherwise inaccessible to web users.

Readers can touch the magazine on an RFID scanner, such as the Violet Mir:ror, obtained separately from the magazine, and this sends a signal to the server triggering access to certain online applications.

Although magazines have long offered a mixture of online and offline content, the traditional exclusive web-based content has typically been reserved for subscribers with password accounts. By offering something for the reader who prefers to pick up a magazine at the newsstand, Amusement’s new model is connecting with the often marginalised casual reader.

Sky brings Skellig to life with bespoke online content

Sky has launched an online campaign for the novel-turned-film, Skellig, and is bringing it to life by featuring bespoke web content.

The film, an adaptation of the fantasy novel by David Almond, features Tim Roth, Kelly MacDonald and John Simm, and will be shown on Sky 1 over Easter ahead of its international theatrical release.

Sky has created a campaign site featuring an interactive game, videos, images, story details and downloadable content, in addition to news and information. The film, which has such rich content itself, has enabled Sky to pull out the detail and create a rich experience which brings the curious and magical elements to life.

The site, which initially launched as a basic presence in February as part of a teaser campaign, will grow to become a central hub for all things Skellig, and continue to feature new content in the run up to the film's premiere to engage its target audience of children. It will also host information about the film as well as details about tickets to school productions, to serve as a resource for Skellig fans.

The bespoke content includes behind-the-scenes videos and images from the making of the film along with interviews with the film's cast and exclusive online promotional videos. It will also feature a competition for schools, which use the novel as a set text, to get pupils to upload creative content about Skellig for the chance to win a premiere screening in their area.

The campaign, promoted via an ad campaign, is part of the ongoing moves by many broadcasters to create multi-platform brands and bespoke online content to attract larger audiences to their web properties.

Information Extration: Web Scraping

Web scraping generically describes the various means of extracting content (data) from a website for the purpose of transforming that content into another format suitable for use in another context.

Web pages are coded in HTML, which uses a tree-like structure to represent the information. The actual content data is mingled with layout and rendering information. Scrapers are the programs that ‘know’ how to get particular content data back from a HTML page by learning the details of how that page is made-up by figuring out where the actual content data is. They then extract that data and structure it so it can be reused and integrated into a new or existing system or website.

A web scrap can occur over one, or many websites, in order to compile all the relevant data into one source. Think of it as ‘scraping’ all your favourite bits off a cake, or a selection of cakes, in order to create your ultimate cake.

Companies generally utilise this information extraction technique as means of obtaining the most recent data possible, particularly when working with information which is subject to frequent changes. Access to certain information can also provide a strategic business advantages. For example a business that knows the locations of competitors can make better decisions about where to focus further growth.

However, the most common, but controversial, use of information taken from websites is to repost scraped data to other sites.

A typical example application for web scraping is a called a ‘web crawler’. A web crawler will ‘crawl’ through sites and copy content from one or more of these existing websites in order to generate a scraper site. The result can range from fair use excerpts or reproduction of text and content, to plagiarized content.

Web scraping differs from ‘screen scraping’ in the sense that a website is really not a visual screen, but is a live HTML/JavaScript-based content structure, with a graphics interface in front of it. Web scraping does not involve working at the visual interface as screen scraping does, but rather working on the underlying object structure of the HTML and JavaScript.

Recursive web scraping – by following links to other pages over many websites, is called ‘web harvesting’, and is performed by software called a bot or a ‘webbot’, ‘harvester’ or ‘spider’.

There are legal web scraping sites that provide free content and are commonly used by companies looking to populate their own sites with web content, often to profit by some means from the traffic the content will hopefully bring. However this content does not help the ranking of the site in search engine results because the content is not original to that site and the original content is the priority of search engines.

What can bloogers teach us about online marketing?

Despite being armed with advanced technology and tools, marketers are often frustrated that their results don’t match the time and effort they expend online. In contrast, bloggers appear to achieve a great deal with very little. So what there is to learn from the success of our blogging comrades?

According to urban legend, when the boffins at NASA discovered that astronauts’ pens did not work in the zero gravity during the Apollo space flights in the 1960s, they regarded it as a ‘mission critical’ hindrance and instituted a massive research program to solve the problem.

The team of enthusiastic NASA scientists and engineers then spent over ten years and US$12 million developing a pen that could write, not only in zero gravity conditions, but upside down, on just about any surface, underwater, and at either extremely hot or cold temperatures.

The legend has it that, when confronted with the same problem, the Russian Federal Space Agency simply used a pencil.

This famous ‘Space Pen’ story circulated widely on the Web several years ago, and has proved to be an enduringly entertaining fable since then. Although the myth isn’t true, its continued popularity suggests that many people can relate to its message about not overcomplicating technology or tools.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the insight captured so brilliantly in the ‘Space Pen’ story is also extremely pertinent for any marketers who are tackling the challenges associated with creating sales-orientated websites.

Even though they usually have access to some very sophisticated, ‘high-tech’ technology and tools, they are often frustrated that the results of their efforts do not match the time and effort they have put in.

There are numerous reasons for this, and it’s a common enough occurrence to suggest that it is not so much what technology you have that counts, but what you do with it. This is further backed up by evidence from a great (if seldom examined) source of potential answers: the blogging community.

Much like the Russians in the ‘Space Pen’ anecdote, bloggers rarely have as sophisticated a toolbox as online marketers, yet they often achieve better results using the simple tools they have at their disposal. So what are they doing that we could learn from?

Clue: it’s about content.

The first understanding that bloggers have is that the simple key to achieving a good search engine ranking is to frequently change a site’s content. The immediacy of the medium is one of blogging’s great strengths, and the majority of bloggers post at least daily and, sometimes, more than once per day.

On the subject of content, bloggers also tend to write short, ‘punchy’ copy focused on being direct and presenting an individual idea or concept, rather than drafting long-winded articles that deal with several ideas all at once, or develop a particular idea comprehensively.

Breaking topics or ideas up like this offers several advantages, not only does it help online readers scan their articles and digest the information presented easily, it enables them to keep their sites dynamic by posting several articles over a short period, instead of one, and it can help improve the perception of how topical their site is, which is also better from an SEO point of view.

Bloggers also tend to focus on presenting good content, rather than graphics. Design definitely helps of course, and should never be overlooked, but it is worth remembering that it doesn’t mean anything to search engines, and only plays a role once a visitor has been attracted to a site.

It’s also a great idea to tag content. Most bloggers use tags to describe their content very effectively, making it easier to both locate and associate with other relevant content, within the site, and externally.

Link popularity is another important way of boosting a site’s prominence and effectiveness. Many SEO experts argue that it is the single most influential factor when it comes to determining how well a site performs in search engine rankings, yet it is also something that is beyond even the most advanced tools or technology (well, legally, at least).

Put simply, a site’s link popularity is based on the number, and quality, of links it has pointing to it. Most search engines reason that, the more independent sites that voluntarily link to your content, the better it must be.

Aside of joining lots of directories and promoting themselves to other sites, many marketers don’t believe there is much else they can do about this kind of external ‘off site’ activity.

Nevertheless, our bloggers once again, have seemingly mastered the art of encouraging numbers of other bloggers and sites to link to them, and offer us the very useful clue – it’s all about content.

The easiest way to attract inbound, one-way links is to offer great content that other sites want to link to. This is far more effective than joining large numbers of directories and, as every good blogger knows, the best part is that it doesn’t require time consuming or expensive promotional efforts – it actually happens quite easily and naturally.

All this is very straightforward and simple, yet it’s surprising how commonly online marketers – much like the legendary NASA boffins – forget how effective the most obvious and ‘low-tech’ solutions can sometimes be.

What is Social Currency?

Think of social currency as being like a good joke. When a bunch of friends sit around and tell jokes, what are they really doing? Entertaining one another? Sure, but they are also using content – mostly unoriginal content that they've heard elsewhere – in order to lubricate a social occasion. And what are most of us doing when we listen to a joke? Trying to memorize it so that we can take it somewhere else. The joke itself is social currency.

Think of this the next time you curse that onslaught of email jokes cluttering up your inbox. The senders think they've given you a gift, but all they really want is an excuse to interact with you. If the joke is good enough, it means the currency is valuable enough to earn them a response.

That's why the most successful TV shows, websites, and music recordings are generally the ones that offer the most valuable forms of social currency to their fans. Sometimes, like with mainstream media, the value is its universality.

It is currency that we exchange with those around us as part of our everyday interactions. In other words, "social currency" is the stuff we talk about with our friends, and colleagues, and family.

Brands must embrace free online content

Recent research from Universal McCann calls on advertisers to take advantage of the new commercial opportunities presented by the increasing consumer demand for everything online to be available for free.

The ‘Welcome to the Free World’ study shows that as consumers focus their online experience around social networks and video sharing sites, advertisers will need to move beyond just placing banners on websites.

‘Free’ will be the dominant metric of the online world and the brands that are willing to be creative are in a strong position to take advantage. The increasing amount of free online content means that only strong creative ideas backed by multimedia executions capable of engaging consumers will stand out, and brands will need to divert budget away from TV and into digital in order to capitalise on the growth of free online content.

According to the study, brands that have already taken advantage of the growth of free online content include Intel, which recently ran a campaign on MySpace; and Microsoft, which placed branded instructional videos on the VideoJug website.

Similarly, Futurescape's research into online television shows that many major brands in America and Britain are already embracing digital and particularly the opportunities afforded by product integration within Web series. Intel and Microsoft will both appear in the forthcoming scifi thriller Gemini Division, while the car manufacturers are the most active sector. In the UK, Ford has backed Bite and Where Are The Joneses?, and Toyota was a major sponsor for KateModern.