Finally a Post about Home Automation

There has not been much about home automation but projects at the research level. At household appliances Miele has a system called Con@ctivity that lets appliances communicate. Internet connectivity is a future issue. This has been the last post of the IFA coverage for today.

BD Live enables to add Internet Content while watching Blue Ray Discs

BD Live is a pip standard introduced by Panasonic, it enables to receive additional information frnm the internet while watching a bluy ray disc film.

Sony introduces OLED Technology

Sony has the smallest hd cam, a thinniest screen and introduces the OLED screen technology, which has an amazing image quality. For networking there is wireless connectivity.

TVPC and Personal Navigation Devices

Daewoo introduces two interesting networking product lines. One is the TVPC, a TV with integrated PC and even preinstalled office software. So it is indeed more than just a harddrive. The second line is the Navicat, a series of navigation devices merged with personal media player features.

Personal Media Players and Navigation

www.commodoreworld.com got a pmp with wifi and a internet connected media server +++ www.wibrain.com, a mobile networking device +++ image frames are popular, www.polaroid.com got one with hd +++ www.tomtnm.com has hd at navigation devices, www.myguidegps.com offers navigation and geo tagging

Revo merges IP with Digital Radlo

Something interesting, www.revo.co.uk puts digital audio standards and ip radio into one device . They won a design award +++ www.dnt.de has an ip radio line, too.

Home Networking Update

New home networking line by Compositor (Meeseries)+++ internet radio device www.compositor.com

New HD Media Server

www.macrosystem.de offers a new range of hnme entertainment, hd pvr with internet connection.

emediablogger @ IFA

Expect first messages in about one or two hours.

Video Business and Advertising

Business Thursday: Video is the new darling of internet marketing. Research studies give most promising predictions for the online video market, even better than the broad adoption that already happens. There is indeed a broad range of services and solutions available for the usage of internet video as well as for video advertising.

For video advertising a new breed of services came up. This is product placement at internet video. Product placement is an advertising format, where products are obviously introduced or used within a story. That is nothing new and it has been reported that already Lonely Girl, one of the first stars of online video, has been visited by marketers and has been talking about the marketers products. Usually product placement is arranged by advertising agencies. But now there is a trend for marketplaces connecting video producers and advertisers aiming to place products within internet video.

There is StoryBids targeting filmmakers and video producers, which have reached a significant audience at new media and by viral videos. StoryBids brings together creators and advertisers for auctioning available placements.

Trendessence is both, a marketplace for product placements and a provider of video advertising solutions. At the marketplace video makers and advertisers may come together. What Trendessence is offering next is the delivering of ads and the tracking of the video usage, which makes the success of a campaign countable.

Zadby is offering a business opportunity for everyone. They encourage freelancers and hobby filmmakers to join their service.

Reach is always crucial for success in the advertising business. To increase the reach one may use several services, which is done best by a social media strategy using aggregators. Some special aggregators are available for the video business to upload videos to several video sharing sites. Services for aggregated uploads and the tracking of the number of views and downloads are Hey!Spread, TubeMogul.com and VideoCounter.com.

3D Visualization is Upcoming

3d visualization is an upcoming technology. The adaption of 3d technologies happens at the internet, at hardware, monitors and screens, virtual reality of course, for real 3d films and by applications. The latter may support the 3d experience on screens.

A software for a 3d experience at the internet is offered by Cool Iris. It is a browser plugin and toolbar facilitating 3d visualization for images, photos and videos. With the plugin one may get a 3d experience at a broad range of popular media sharing sites. The toolbar enables to browse for media and sharing.

Another software is Photosynth by Microsoft. This software transforms several nearby photos into a browsable 3d presentation.

Putting the right software into a receiver with computer capacity might be a solution for 3D Displays without auxiliary means like glasses. Possibly there will be some news about 3d screens by the IFA coverage on Friday.

emediablogger reports live from the IFA on Friday

There will be live updates from the IFA consumer electronics fair on Friday at this blog. The main focus probably will be on internet connected home networking. This embraces innovative home entertainment devices with internet connection and networking facilities, real innovations, initiatives and projects from the research and development area. Surprises might come from the range of household appliances as this is a new area at the IFA:

This all will happen from about 10.00 am CET to 18.00 pm CET and will be done with an internet marketers expert knowledge. So you may expect posts about real innovations.

You may get the news by visiting the blog or by the newsfeed. If something special happens, there will be an announcement this way.

Internet Advertising Innovations and Trends

I came across two completely different announcement by internet advertising services related to placements and content. The interesting case is that one is favouring precise targeting up to the page level and the other does embrace the opposite way by integrating user generated content even within display advertising. If you have knowledge about internet advertising, you may have noticed the discussion about placements at social media and at the long tail as well as pages in general.

LucidMedia is offering a contextual targeting solution up to the page level. This assures a precise placement by a marketers choice of content and pages.

A completely contrary approach has been announced by Avenue A Razorfish in cooperation with Pluck, a provider of social media solutions (Avenue A, Pluck Make Interactive Ads … Interactive). What they aim to do is to enable users to interact with ads and to add content to display advertising. This would be a new level of interactivity at online advertising.

At all there will be a broader choice of advertising formats to choose from. Contemplating that people are just watching what they want may question the argument about unrelated content. But precise targeting might be useful in high priced segments or b2b markets. The advertising market is still evolving and it will be the marketers choice.

Interactive Video with Omnisio

Omnisio is another video sharing site with interactive video features. The service offers typical features of video sharing sites like channels, but goes beyond this and does offer tools for compilations and presentations by using other media like text, images and photos beside video. In short, it is multimedia (view example). What makes the videos interactive is the ability to add comments and links. Additionally a menu beside the player may offer further information about the content. Something nice for sharing a video is the ability to easily build a link just for a part of a video by a button at the right. Comments become added by a simple click into a video, viewers have the ability to filter added comments.

There is a statement at the website mentioning that interactive video is just in the beginning and that new opportunities will come up. Lately the service has been acquired by Google and the team looks forward to work together with the YouTube team.

Home Automation and Home Networking

There are a couple of networking projects around to make life easier. Some are about home entertainment and some have a more general and comprehensive approach to connect whole households. There are already some devices that do connect everything like the Screenfridge by Electrolux does, a fridge with a computer screen. Future use of such devices may be automated delivery by barcode scanning or rfid chips, when a product is no longer available. Other usage of connected homes might be to start the heating or washing machine before coming home and industrial usage.

In the following there is an introduction to some projects. In a couple of days there will be a showcase about new networking innovations and devices at this blog after visiting the IFA. You may have a look at this blog or the feed on Friday for possible live reports and updates.

Futurelife is a experimental project in switzerland. They are always testing new technologies. Information is available by press releases.

inHaus is called the intelligent home. It is a project about innovations for offices and hospitals and the like.

AMD with AMD Live and Intel with Intel Viiv both are active in optimizing the home networking and multimedia experience.

For specialized information sources and standardization projects you may visit the following sources about Home Automation and Home Networking Standards.

Rating and Reputation by Social Media Profiles

WebWorkerDaily reported about an interesting service today. This is Divvs, a rating service based on social media profiles and social networking. Rating here is about credibility. Divvs aims to rate people and maybe services by the social web experience to make it easier to evaluate business or collaboration partners. Whereas the service is in alpha mode, registrations are open to everyone. To read the complete article click Divvs: Trust Through Networking.

Comment Tracking Services and Tools

Comment tracking and commenting tools are useful to keep in touch with own comments, to read others and to enrich the experience. Some comment tracking tools have even evolved to own social networks for discussions. This is an update to the earlier post about comment tracking tools.

co.mments is a tracking tool to to keep in touch with own posts and to be informed about new comments.

Bubble Comment is an application for adding video comments to a website. People may share their comments. If a publisher wants a website to be enabled for video comments, simply a free button needs to be installed.

commenZ is a comment community with an own toolbar. People may post comments to the community instead of posting them on a website. Comments of the community may become read by a toolbar while visiting a website. Arguments for this toolbar might be to avoid deletion of comments and closer discussions at the community. Toolbars often are a way for more serious information sharing, too.

CommentAnywhere is another browser plugin available for Firefox only actually and usable for information sharing. It allows to comment everywhere and share opinions with friends, groups and at social networks.

Disqus is a comment system for websites. The intention of Disqus is to enable discussions beyond a particular website, which might be a great tool for publishers to enrich the experience of visitors.

LineBuzz again is an unusual but interesting tool. It enables comments at every part of a text by marking a part of it.

A Live Web Application, Six Groups

Six Groups is another live and social networking application. Like the live blogging application Covert it Live it can easily become added to a weblog or website. Six Groups is a community application with social networking features. If added, a bar will appear at the top of a site with a link to view lifestreams of the community activity and member login. For social networking members may add people as friends and groups may become created. Furthermore there is a twitter integration and a syndication feature by widgets. Posts within Six Groups may happen by text, photo and video.

Internet Video and Interactive TV

A story about a future application for interactive tv by Yahoo and Intel had a lot of publicity today (emediablogger @ digg). What has been announced are widgets for tv, which means interactivity and personalized news at the tv set. That is interesting and good news for internet professionals as this again confirms that internet technologies will be something basic to interactive television which is expected for 2010 depending on regional developments. Interactivity at videos is most advanced at the internet as just posted yesterday interactive video is going mainstream. This gives reason to think about internet companies to have an impact on interactive television, which even already happens. A way to receive internet and internet video already exists by set top boxes and media servers like the famous TiVo. Whereas real interactive tv might be hard to imagine it is upcoming for sure. Already the Yahoo / Intel project shows that this will go far beyond the features available today like sending messages to a broadcast. If there are widgets and feeds involved nobody will stop people from sending videos and make their way to the screen. It will be interesting and fascinating to see how the convergence of television, internet and other media will happen.

If you are interested in this subject you will find information sources about future tv, up to date itv applications like epg's, developer resources and applications for interactive tv at FOLDEN.INFO.

Interactive Video goes Mainstream

Interactivity at videos has become a more common quality at internet video sharing portals, a topic that has been an issue since the first post at this blog followed by an essay about interactive films. Already common features are clickable adverts and additional information like a menu to browse related videos as it is offered by Revver. Depending on the implemented properties now people can interact with a video to receive further information or to add video comments. In the following there are the newest developments.

Viddler has enabled commenting. Comments may become added by text or even as video comments. Tagging is another feature.

Friction.tv is a page for discussions. Answers and comments to video contributions may be done by text and video.

YouTube is offering Video Annotations, enabling comments and the addition of further information by texts and links. Annotations may be done even within a video to give viewers a choice to proceed or to link additional information. Another nice feature at YouTube now are Streams, something like screening rooms where people can watch together and chat.

Innovid is another service provider of interactive video solutions. They are offering a solution to enrich videos and to add further capacities like advertising and shopping.

By the way, interactivity is something that is expected to become implemented into television, too. This will go beyond messaging to a broadcast like it is already usual today. The timeline for the implementation of interactive tv features depends on country markets, where the UK is the most advanced. Generally interactive tv is awaited for 2010.

Newsfeeds, a Business Basis, Marketing and Monetization Opportunity

Business Thursday: Newsfeeds have become mainstream and they are a basis today to distribute and syndicate information, keep in touch with customers and for social networking. This all has started with a development by Netscape in 1999. The basic reasons for the development have been the handling of the information overload and to evade the increasing spam problem. Today newsfeeds are used everywhere. Every common browser has a feed reader implemented and newsfeeds are used for various social networking purposes. Examples are personalized startpages for general information purposes made available by most search engines and specialized services and the use of newsfeeds to distribute information and media with widgets. By this newsfeeds are a must have for every business and publisher.

Today there are two main newsfeed standards available for general purposes. The up to date version of RSS and the Atom Standard. The RSS Standard is available by a Creative Commons License and Atom is an internet standard maintained by the IETF. Both standards are suitable for media and to distribute audio and video files by podcasting. Beside the common standards there are a couple of newsfeed standards for particular purposes like GeoRSS for local information and OPML to syndicate multiple feeds. There is an ongoing development, which is worth to be observed. New developments at the social media space e.g. are lifestreams, which enable people to share their web activities.

The basis to distribute information and participate in syndication is an own newsfeed. To develop or start a newsfeed there are two ways, developing a feed based on the standards mentioned above or to use a feed generator. Feed generators are available by popular feed services like FeedBurner and on the web by forms. After a feed has been developed, it should be checked with a feed validator. This is recommended for both, self developed feeds and generated feeds. This will assure that everything is correct and may give hints for improvements. A popular feed validator for both Atom and RSS is Feed Validator. A broad range of general and further information about newsfeeds and tools is available at RSS, Newsfeeds and Content Tools.

If a feed has been created it is time to promote and share it. Basicly this is done by placing a link at homepages and submissions to newsfeed directories and search engines. Doing some social networking for sharing a newsfeed is the next step. For example a widget may be created to share a newsfeed in another way. Last but not least there are opportunities to monetize newsfeeds. Google now is offering monetization of newsfeeds by AdSense and at FeedBurner. Further services again are available at RSS, Newsfeeds and Content Tools.

Change of Usage means Changing Interfaces

The internet has become mainstream and today it is used for most different purposes. An interesting case is the change to use the internet for recreation. This might result in new requirements for the user interface, where people can relax or at least browse easier and do so without a lot of clicks. This is not necessarily opposite to the key gains of interactive media, this just might be a step beyond in some way.

Whereas already observed earlier a new search engine gave me reason to write about this trend. This is Oamos calling themselve an inspiration engine, something that usually might be described by information discovery or discovery engine. When searching at Oamos results are coming in by something like flying windows. The whole process is accompanied by audio. It is a meta search engine, which enables to narrow results by something like a tuner. Adjustment to the results may vary from facts to entertainment. There are a couple of advanced search options and the durance of incoming results might be varied. It is limited to 3 minutes at the homepage and up to 20 minutes by using an account. There are personalization functions, widgets and licensing for professional use.

Video seems to be the ideal content for such interfaces. Chime.tv and iDesktop.tv are examples for video discovery. Something that is part of the Flock Browser, too. Chime.tv may become described as something like a personal video discovery board. It is a video search engine with personalization functions and social networking tools. iDesktop.tv has a search function, does show featured videos and enables to connect to friends and to handle videos by an account.

A completely different purpose has jaanix. It is a news aggregator using a tuner to narrow relevant stories.

Mobile Social Media and Networking

Mobile social media is a hot activity at mobile phones as reported at Mobile Social Media ... Usage. A whole range of social media services are available as mobile only services and more and more social networking services do establish mobile sites. The popular news rating site Digg with its mobile version is an example.

The most noticeable difference of mobile applications might be the need for the installation of software opposite to the ease of use by a mobile page and access. Mobile widgets are a further option. Personally I favour the mobile access of services as these do not depend on a particular carrier and other issues. But of course the need to install a software might depend upon the importance and purpose. In the following there are some mobile social networks introduced accessible by login at mobile pages, which are all available at FOLDEN Mobile. Further applications are available by the following external link to mobile social media.

Most useful with mobile phones might be location based information as usually one is on the go. Location based information might delivered automaticly by gps devices and applications or gathered by mobile social media. A service that is about sharing local information is Socialight. The Socialight service is searchable by locations and items. Other ways to navigate are tags like history and channels for cities. Channels may become edited by groups of people. One may find other people and login to contribute and to discuss.

itsmy and MocoSpace are both popular mobile networks with 10000s of users online at the mobile internet. They are offering a lot of features like messaging, mobile pages and blogs, dating and mobile video.

mdog and mobiseer are about news. mdog is a mobile news search engine, which may become personalized and used to search information from websites and blogs. mobiseer is a mobile social bookmarking service displaying popularity by views. A couple of other mobile news and news sharing services are Mippin, ReadBurner for newsfeeds offering, too, a service to mobilize blogs and Technorati Mobile.

All services mentioned are available just by a click at social networking or news at FOLDEN Mobile, where mobile video is another nice feature beside travel information and other useful services.

Curious for Googles Android OS?

The Android OS is a Google software development project of an operating system for mobile phones. First mobile phones equipped with the Android OS are awaited this fall. MobileCrunch made an up to date video available with an up to date introduction to Android, which is embedded below.



Further up to date information is available at CrunchGear by the tag Android, information for developers and some further videos at the official Android Developers Blog.

News Rating with Yahoo Buzz

Yahoo Buzz is a news rating service similar to the most popular Digg. At both services people can vote for the stories. At Digg only user submitted stories are available for voting, which makes it some kind of a social network. Opposite to this beside user submitted stories Yahoo Buzz determines hot topics based on most popular search terms submitted at the Yahoo Search Engine. Based on user activities like passed on news and votes stories may make the way to the Yahoo Homepage.

To publishers Yahoo Buzz might be important as it has a large reach as reported in an article by ReadWriteWeb.

At Yahoo Buzz now everyone can rate and submit stories. For publishers, bloggers as well as publishing companies, there is a special partner feature to submit content. Website owners may get content for websites by a widget.

More Blog and Widget Advertising Networks

Here are a couple of further blog advertising services with widget advertising and paid postings targeting both advertisers and bloggers.

Advertlets is an asian blog advertising network. They are offering the whole range of blog advertising formats, banners, paid posts and widgets. Additionally there are text links, video advertising and widgets for polls.

LinkWorth has a similar comprehensive service offering. For display advertising they are focussed on text and do offer in content and in text ads, rotating ads and text links. They are not serving blogs alone, but got paid and sponsored posts especially targeting the blogosphere. Further formats are whole content pages, article and directory submissions as well as search marketing services..

RevResponse.com is dedicated to b2b marketing and lead generation, which in part is facilitated by the distribution of content. Their audience is business and technology oriented. Advertising formats offered are available for blogs, rss newsfeeds and websites.

Blogsvertise is another network for paid posts and sponsored reviews.

ScribeFire has an interesting business model. By origin it is a blog editor, which is offering monetizing services to bloggers. The latter is done by partnerships with over 100 advertising networks. Bloggers may integrate adverts by simple drag and drop. Further information for bloggers is available at the ScribeFire QuickAds page. For advertisers there is a special contact form.

Live Blogging, Stream your Posts

Cover it Live is an amazing live blogging application. It enables live streaming of posts similar to a news ticker, which visitors and viewers can read and watch without reloading and scrolling. This is most convenient for events or reporting. Posts do appear immediately and may contain images, photos and videos. Visitors are able to comment and to participate in polls in realtime, too, by a chat like input. Results of polls do immerdiately appear within the stream. Further features are the integration of related news and recommendations. After finishing a live session a streams containing all media and polls may become stored and made available for later access.

It is a hosted solution that may easily become integrated at blogs and homepages and which is available in various languages. For further information there is a demo video at the Cover it Live homepage. For other live application see the label live at the top of the blog.

A Piano playing virtual Robot

A brief but nice entertainment spot for you, a piano playing robot. Just type some text into the box, a couple of sentences with a touch of poetry and a refrain would work best. Then click show and the piano robot will play and sing you a song: wasteyourtimebot.com

Social Networking with Flock

Going into social networking is about using services and connecting with other people for various purposes. For the best experience while using a couple of social media services a social network aggregator is recommended to ease access and to stay updated with news and activities of friends and others. At the introduction to social networking I told that I decided to use the Flock Browser. Here are some experiences.

Flock is a complete browser solution with all functions that other browsers have, but with useful additions for social networking. While starting a more serious social networking experience with Flock my first actions have been checking out some of the features. The first thing that I remarked has been the media stream surfbar at the top displaying thumbnails of photos and videos. By the default settings there are some photo and video media streams made available. To find more there is a special search function enabling to search for multimedia and stay connected with a theme. This is a nice entertaining and customizable surfing experience.

The second basic element is the sidebar, where typical browser functions are displayed and further integrated social networking tools. The basic functions are bookmarks and a newsfeed reader. Both are customizable in a most flexible way. What I really enjoyed lately is the customization of the feed reader, which allows to assort newsfeeds within folders. This as well as the feed reader at all is giving a comfortable reading experience. What is remarkable with the bookmarking function is that new bookmarks may become automaticly forwarded to several social bookmarking services.

Advanced social networking options at the sidebar are the administration of accounts and the friend function, which both do require accounts do be used. The friend function displays logos and enables to watch the activity of someone. Another advanced option is a blog editor, which can be used with most common blogging services and software.

Flock is most customizable and permanently updating the software, adding new features and integrates further social networking services. Actually only a couple of well known social media services are completely integrated. But by customization and easy installation of plugins at the toolbar most services are reachable and every particular service offering a plugin can be added. Flock has great tools, is giving a comfortable surfing experience and is by this a recommendable social networking aggregator and browser.

Blogger Communities and Tools

Business Thursday: One of the best things to do for business online is cooperation. Cooperations happen everywhere on the internet, the big players are doing it and everyone is gathering and sharing information today. This is called a win win situation, a scenario advantageous to every participant. A further opportunity to bloggers beside blogrolls is the participation in blogger communities. Some communities are of general interest and others for people who take blogging serious. There one may connect with other bloggers to exchange articles and links, ideas and strategies or to cooperate elsewise. Last but not least most of these communities are offering useful tools.

blogcatalog is a weblog directory and blogger community. They are offering a discussion forum and information about blogging, blog promotion by a directory submission and features of active blogger as well as tools and widgets. The latest tool they have added is called social stream widget, which displays so called lifestreams. A lifestream is a social networking tool showing realtime information about what someone is doing at the social web actually. A popular lifestreaming service is friendfeed, which enables to follow other peoples social networking activities and to connect.

FuelMyBlog offers discussions, a forum and an own blogroll widget. At the community one may connect with others and become friends. Participating blogs are featured at a particular starting page.

Performancing is a community dedicated to professional bloggers managed by a team of entrepreneurs and professionals. At the website there is offered related information, a discussion forum and blogs. Furthermore they are offering premium services for blog promotion and do have an own advertising network and exchange at Performancing Ads, which offers a business opportunity by getting paid or to exchange traffic.

Technorati is the best known service for monitoring the live web, stories from blogs and other media like video. They are offering a couple of tools to track what happens at the social web. This may be used to be informed and to gather information about what is popular at the social web. The latter might be useful to develop a content strategy. To become noticed by Technorati and to promote an own weblog one needs to register.

Qik, Live Broadcasting from Mobile Phones

Qik is a personal broadcasting services, which enables everyone to stream live video from a mobile phone into the web is open now to everyone. Features they offer are live video at the homepage, groups, a search for people and an event page. It seems that the page is very active. While visiting there have been 29 live broadcasts and 376 recorded shows within the last hour.

Some Facts and Numbers about Widgets and Marketing

Widgets are popular and useful for information and marketing. In the following there are some articles with facts and numbers about the usage and money spend for campaigns.

This article includes some numbers and contemplates about different kinds of widgets:
comScore Widget Metrix Report: 615 Million People Viewed or Interacted With a Widget

The following is the most controversial article I read about marketing with widgets. It emphasizes the costs and reflects the thoughts made at the former article. It is clear that companies may spend a large amount of money for a campaign, if they are able to attract a large audience. Opposite to this there are easy ways to develop widgets and to get into this business:
Tiny Widget Apps Can Lead to Some Big Bills

This is a success story about a campaign using widgets:
Widgets drive Web readers

Conclusion: There are most different approaches for campaigns using widgets. The market has already developped and embraces advanced advertising technologies like behavioural targeting. Furthermore marketing with widgets indeed has already influenced the advertising market by the requirements of new metrics like engagement, which means measuring the activity within a web applications and the time spent with it instead of page impressions. Another trend that came up with social media marketing is the targeting based on profiles and relationships instead of using demographic data.

Social Media and Widget Advertising Networks

Widget advertising has already been mentioned as one business opportunity with widgets for marketers and publishers at the introduction of doing business with widgets at the post Widgets, Advertising, eCommerce and Widget Development. This article is introducing several social media and widget advertising networks, which reaches the social media sphere and do offer social media advertising and monetizing opportunities to developpers of rich web applications, publishers or owners of pages at social networks.

At first there is Ad Chap calling themselve an ad network for social networks. They are specialized in facebook and offering various advertising formats for facebook applications. Advertisers may target this group of publishers within Facebook. which is one of the largest and most popular social networks. The ad network relies on a self service for advertisers and delivers real time statistics. Another advertising network targeting Facebook is the fbExchange. On the publishers side they are offering opportunities to developpers of applications.

Clearspring is a whole widget network offering various services. They got a platform for the distribution and viral seeding, management and tracking of widgets. By their Widget Media Page advertising and monetizing opportunities are accessible.

Cubics is a pure advertising network. They are specialized to serve developpers of social network applications and offer precise targeting to advertisers by demographic data.

gigya again is a widget network with a couple of services like viral seeding. They are offering advertising and business opportunities to site owners, developpers and the development of branded widgets to companies.

Google GadgetAds is the web application part of Googles AdSense and AdWords advertising networks. There is a lot of useful information at their introduction like case studies and success stories. Actually this program is limited to advanced users.

A couple of further widget advertising networks are offering more specialized options like affiliate programs for particular products, product or music recommendations and even own shops or shopping within widgets. If you are interested in this, please visit Commerce Widgets at FOLDEN.INFO and for further advertising and marketing opportunities at social networks Social Media Markertng.

Guided Virtual Reality Tours through Berlin

Have you recognized the former post about virtual showrooms in June with the hint about the virtual showroom for the bitfilm digital film festival? Meanwhile the festival is over, but for the enthusiasts of digital films all films of the festival are available at the bitfilm festival homepage. Here is a press release with a list of the winners.

Now I received an announcement from Twinity, the hosting virtual world of the virtual showroom. They are offering virtual "Walking Tours ... around Alpha City Berlin". Probably you know that Berlin is the capital of Germany, which has been visited by Barack Obama lately. While the guided virtual walk through you may become shown some of the famous sights of Berlin, "the TV Tower, the Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall building) and of course the Brandenburg Gate". Tours will happen every Tuesday and Thursday at 3pm (CET), 9am (EST), 9pm (SST). To participate you will need to have the Twinity software installed.

Rejaw, a new Micro Blogging Service

Rejaw is a new micro blogging service available for private and business usage. It combines messaging and chat, which means updates by shouts and whispers and real time conversations. Just as it happened first at Twitter actually all public updates are shown at the homepage.

Cool features are the integration of multimedia files at posts like images and videos and the integration with other social networks. As they have just started there are only a few tools listed at Rejaw Tools. For developpers there is an api and documentation at For Developpers. Further announcements are made at their blog, where a feed is available to stay informed about updates.

Earning Money with Video Sharing and Video APIs

Video sharing is popular and some video sharing networks do offer affiliate programs to earn money. The usual business opportunity is to get a share of the advertising revenue. This happens by embedding videos into websites or sharing it by newsfeeds or widgets.

One video network offering such an affiliate program is Revver. Features they offer are automaticly edited playlists and newsfeeds, customizable widgets, embedding options of course and an api for developers for more options.

blinkx is a video search engine offering two different affiliate programs. The first is blinkx AdHoc, which is dedicated to video sharers. A nice feature is a video wall, which displays a broad choice of video thumbnails to click on. Lately they came up with a second busness opportunity, blinkx Red Label. The latter enables small and large publishers to integrate the video search engine into web sites.

If you got own videos, video advertising networks might be another opportunity.

Widgets, Advertising, eCommerce and Widget Development

Business Thursday: Widgets are small internet applications, that may become installed at web sites and social media pages or at the desktop and mobile phone. Synonymous names are gadgets, rich internet or web applications. Like a software programmed for a particular purposes, widgets may be used for most every meaningful intention. Technically widgets are client side applications, which means that applications become loaded just one time or installed like software. Then only the information becomes updated. Typical purposes are the distribution of information or media, games or communications purposes like chat, messaging or even video conferencing. Widgets are most popular to obtain information at internet devices and at social media. They have become such important that even the W3C internet standardization body has launched a group called WebApps Working Group aiming to define standards for widgets and other client side applications. Popular widgets are loaded millions of time and some networks deliver billions of impressions daily.

To participate in this business opportunity there are several ways depending on the targets and it might be easier that the introduction has sound. By developing a widget enterprises and even homepage owners may get viewers and visitors. A popular example for blogger are blogrolls. Depending on the approach widgets may easily become generated by automatic means, the widget generators. Enterprises may develop branded widgets themselves or by a service to better deliver a message.

The second opportunity is the widget advertising, which is mostly the same as on the web. But additionally adverts could be included within a widget. As a widget is either the marketing tool itself or carrying adverts, commercial widgets may be found and distributed at a company homepage or at widget directories, advertising at widget advertising networks. Popular affiliate widgets for example are the amazon widgets, which are customizable to display particular products.

Widget generators, development kits and services often are offered by widget directories, too. So does LabPixies, a widget directory offering advertising services, too. Another directory is SpringWidgets, which is offering a widget development kit. Widgetbox again is offering an easy way for developping by its widget generator and syndication services at the directory. The latter is what Widgipedia does for desktop, mobile and web widgets. YourMinis is directory and does offer further services. Google and Yahoo both do offer a directory and a development suite by Google Gadgets and Yahoo Widgets.

Do not miss the feed to obtain further information about widgets soon and feel free to bookmark and spread the word.

Mobile Advertising is getting hot

Mobile advertising is an emerging market. People get smarter mobile phones with internet access and flatrates enable everyone to surf the mobile web without thinking about the costs. By this the mobile web becomes an everyday medium as it is the internet. There are already a couple of mobile advertising networks offering the same opportunities like ad networks on the internet. To independent publishers this is a new earning opportunity and a reason to develop mobile pages. Whereas actually the usage of the mobile web is beyond the usage of the web, the future looks promising because of the broad user base. There are about two billion mobile phone users in the world. Often mentioned key factors of the mobile internet are practical applications and tools. This is plausible as the screen is small and as on the go everything needs to work easily and fast. But this might change by available bandwidth and flatrates. Mobile social media already has become a very popular feature for mobile users as mentioned at Mobile Social Media dominates the Mobile Usage.

But mobile advertising and marketing is much more than display advertising. Other forms of advertising are text and multimedia messaging, coupons and incentives and mobile widgets. Further features of the future will be a broader usage of locations based media.

There is an up to date report with an overview about mobile advertising by the IAB available as a pdf file: A Mobile Advertising Overview. To learn more about mobile advertising and marketing I recommend the homepage of the MMA Global with up to date articles, reports about mobile campaigns and white papers. If you would like to surf the mobile web I recommend FOLDEN Mobile, which lists up to date mobile services usable without a software installation.