BRAND DOMAIN NAMES
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(This is a sticky post, please find current news items below) By ahmad s ali in WEBrand |
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What's in a NAME ?
Name is just not just a logo on the Web. Name can define whether a site gets to compete or not. Names can define the brand of a site in a cluttered web world. There few steps one should consider when thinking of a name for a web site or application. To begin with a decision has to be made - do you want to a meaningful or meaningless name? Both have their good and bad aspects. There is nothing wrong in getting a meaningless name if the name is meaningful to the site or application.
There are some criteria that one must consider when brainstorming about a name in the web world:
01. The current trend in the space you are in = f everyone is using 4 letter bubu, pupu, mumu names; you don't want to have a name that makes you sound like a rocket science company.
02. The demography you are going after = this is a bit difficult in the digital world as the surfer demography is far more wide and deep for any given space on the web. Things are not as clinical as the solid state world. Having said that one must have some idea of who will be their core surfer group.
03. Geo location of the surfer = Thou there is no physical borders in the digital world but there cultural borders in any world. If your content and application is more geared towards the Occidental or Oriental cultures, you need name that goes with it.
04. Fund-able names = whether you agree or not with the importance of the name for the web, your Venture funding partner will certainly look at it very carefully. They have swallowed the bitter pill to realize that barrier to entry for a web entrepreneur is very low in today web evolution. Every advantage counts.
05. Longevity = can your name survive the first year of hype and grow as your specific web space calms down. In this market all names are cool whether they have vowel s or not. This may not be the case one or more year from now.
There are no ends to how many different things you can look at before getting a name. The above list should make a good starting point to get you thinking. Name and intellectual property is a whole different Blog entry. It is important to do a quick trademark and copyright scan before settling on a name. This will give you a sense of stability in the long run if your site or application grows and you become someone whose name start popping up all over the web 2.0 analysis sites.
Final words - Name will your focus your mind when you are starting to develop your web product.
2OOLS for the web
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Wednesday, 26 March 08 - 04:35 PM (GMT -08:00) By ahmad s ali in WEBrand |
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Best Honeypot to get new clients
Give away free web service even if it's the first product you developed or you had really grand plans for it. It will pay off in the long run in multiples. Most of the surfers or visitors to the Web are becoming matured and sophisticated by the minute.
Tools on the web mean something else entirely. Tools mean that you can use a very specific application with very few features for a purpose. There three types of tools out there and it will change constantly. The overall categories will remain the same. The three types tools on the web now days are:
I) Fun tools
II) Task Tools
III) Mash-Ups
People visit them for various reasons. One of the main reasons is that they see value in the tool for example: they like the usability of the tool or they feel they are getting a lot done for free. Whatever the reason may be, the fact that you have a group of users coming to the site means that they find something worthwhile in your tool. That's the best litmus test one can have.
Why make a tool? No web application development is a trivial exercise at its core. What benefit can derive from developing a free tool on the web? The answer to most of the questions like these is singular - people like to use free tools. In the solid state world, it used to be free Torch Light with batteries. On the web its tools that show them shipping price comparison.
Let’s generate some examples with links -
- Fun Tools - http://snipshot.com/
- Task Tools - http://www.shiptool.com
- Mashes - http://www.flightwait.com
Listers
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Wednesday, 26 March 08 - 04:13 PM (GMT -08:00) By ahmad s ali in Biz 'n' Buzz |
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Save the List and the Lister
There are no end to how many entries with one sort of lists or another comes into the BlogoSphere. Though there are repetition from one site to another, there is a good reasons why they are so popular. Listing is one of the easiest way to consume verbiage online. It's also one of the best way to display lists based on the subject matter. If you can get on these lists generated by the bloggers, one may see traffic spikes quite immediately.
There are different types of lists categorized in 2 specific types:
one) Sponsored lists
two) Organic lists
Paid lists - are usually those bloggers that take sponsors money to generate the lists with their article and places your links. There nothing wrong in being on these lists. A click is a click. Keep in mind that avid web travelers are sophisticated enough to know that some one is getting paid to generate this list. The clickers will usually take these lists of links with a grain of salt. One of the ways I can tell a paid list is by seeing the quality of the article. If the article is generated in a rush and then followed by list of links with no analysis per link, it was most probably written over a cup of coffee by looking at the email requests from the companies themselves. Once again there is nothing wrong with this model as long as you know the clicker's perception will be different.
Organic lists - is a thing of beauty. This means that a blogger, writer or analyst picked you from the web bazaar full of sites and applications. They gave proper attention to your site or application. analysed what you are doing and how you are bringing value to the clicker. They also described the work-flow of your creation on the list. This requires time, love ad care. A clicker will know this without any reservation and value the ride to your URL. For me personally, getting on one Organic list is equal to three sponsored lists.
Final Words - Make friend in the web matrix and try to get on organic lists by grass-root level efforts. You cannot will this activity. You have to have some level presence on the web for a time.
Web-based Offshore = WebShore
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Wednesday, 26 March 08 - 04:06 PM (GMT -08:00) By ahmad s ali in Biz 'n' Buzz |
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Webshore is different than Offshore. How?
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Logo and the URL
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Wednesday, 26 March 08 - 03:46 PM (GMT -08:00) By ahmad s ali in NameGame |
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Use the .com/.net/.org in the logo
Name.com - we know immediately that your empahsis is towrds web.
Name.net - we know instantly that you are a .net not .com - we'll remember.
Name.org - we know immediately that you may be non-profit.
Logo development before the mass transition to the web was a different discipline all together. It was not any any different from today in a academic sense, but it is very different how we use logos for the web presence and extend it to the real world.
Branding in the web is based on seconds rahter that days. Time has become compressed as surfers allow 3 seconds of their attention rather than 28 days of a magazine lying in our bathroom. Surfers are becoming matured and sophisticated. They want to know content verbiage quickly. Time is valuable when the surfer knows that just around the click there is something really cool that they can play with.
We are saving links in our favorites and bookmark portals, that most of us have to do secondery searches into our own bookmark. Web sites and applications are hungry to have any edge they can get in the web world of seconds and hours. A logo with the Domain Extensions in the logo makes the surfer remmeber one more thing in totality.
Logo is the entry point of any branding package.
Software need not be DULL
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Wednesday, 26 March 08 - 03:44 PM (GMT -08:00) By ahmad s ali in Biz 'n' Buzz |
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Web Software can be beautiful and playful
Web software in the enteprise arena needs to re-think the way we develop the interface and workflow interactions. Web software can be beautilfu, cheerful and playful.
We are still living in the world of dull and depressing enterprise software interface world. Our professional life in todays life is pent infornt of different application views whether on Web or Desktop. We are trying to make work life more creative with different work scheduling, upwardly mobile training, life and work balance, to name but few. Unfortunately, that outlook does not translate into developing the digital world ehre we live to get all task flow accomplished.Blog without Blogging
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Wednesday, 26 March 08 - 03:41 PM (GMT -08:00) By ahmad s ali in WEBrand |
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Don't have to have Blog sites with Comments
There are multiple ways to digitally publish and distribute our content and knowledge base online. Blog is definitley led the way to share our thoughts and feedbacks throgh this medium, but thats not the only opthion available in today's web.
Blogging brought us user generated content. Sometimes the users of the web just wants to know our thoughts and our opinions about subjects that we know most about. We dont have to have a two way communication with the entire population of surfers that come our way via our sites.
What's a tumblelog?
The Wikipedia explains that a tumblelog is a variation on traditional blogging that favors very short, mixed media posts with little or no commentary. In essence it's a lightning-fast way to publish the stuff you run across on the web every day, and the layout includes large text, photos, links, and video frames. A really great example of a well-done tumblelog is LoftLog.
Teaser Site
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Wednesday, 26 March 08 - 03:31 PM (GMT -08:00) By ahmad s ali in Biz 'n' Buzz |
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Test the waters
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