Tag: Twitter

Categories
Mostly Everything

Geeky things you can buy for P50.00

When Apple revamped the music industry with single track purchases for less than P50.00 per track, that changed the way people sold applications and in-app purchases. It’s essentially the “tingi” method turned into a digital business. Now there’s a huge product launch tomorrow but all we can say is that it has something to do with the power of P50.00.

In the digital age, there are surprisingly a lot of things you can buy with fifty pesos. Here are some examples:

2,500 Coins in Temple Run

A definite chart topper on iOS devices, I still have no idea how people can score over 3,000,000 points in a single run. But I do know this — if you’re really frustrated and want to earn those coins without any effort, you can always drop $0.99 for 2,500 coins to help you buy upgrades for your brave explorer.

“GRAND UPPERCUT!!”

Streets of Rage 2

Streets of Rage 2 has my childhood written all over it. It’s become one of the defining games of its genre, released way back in the 90’s for the SEGA Genesis. And guess what? It’s here for iOS for less than fifty pesos. That’s totally awesome. I’m reliving an epic two-player side scrolling beat ’em up experience with Axel, Blaze, Skate and Max as they take on Shiva and Mr. X. Streets of Rage 2 is a complete port to iOS. It even includes multiplayer support via wireless connectivity.

Two Games of Half Life 2: Survivor

I now have a new reason to head over to Resorts World and it has nothing to do with the casino. The new “Gamezoo” arcade is a two-storey haven for a lot of coin-op arcade machines that are practically hard to find. Case in point: Half Life 2: Survivor. This arcade series was never released in the USA and quite frankly I’m baffled as to how Gamezoo even knew that this game existed. It’s out and it’s in Resort’s World. A single game costs P20.00. Half Life 2: Survivor is a marriage between Team Fortress 2 and the Half Life franchise allowing up to 8 players to battle simultaneously in a single arena.

———–

These are just three cheap (and geeky) thrills you can get with PHP 50.00. What about you? What are your most favorite apps that retail for less than a dollar?

Categories
Mostly Everything

Google’s New SEO Algorithm: ‘Social Engine Optimization’

EDIT: I was listening to an episode of TWiT three days ago and the end result of the controversy is exactly what I outline in the latter part of this post.

As of last week, most of your SEO tactics are rendered obsolescent. Somewhat.

Last year, Google’s top level mandate was “to go social.” And that reflected havily on Google employees with regards to performance so much so that company bonuses were to be directly associated with how Google performed in “social.” So last week, in the week of CES 2012, Google unveiled (secretly) its full blown foray into the new search algorithm making use of your social profile, starting with Google+. Google+ isn’t just a social network then. It does so much more:

– it helps Google see whether the content you post is actually yours and not scraped from somewhere else. How does it know which sites are yours? Well, your G+ profile under “About Me.” See the image on top? It says I contribute to A Bugged Life, NUDI (our SCUBA site), and Geekout (I write there once in a while). I’m not sure if this can be gamed — like I can ask 100 friends to say that they write on my blog to increase SERP, but then again this new tailored search feature will show different results depending on the account you hold. In other words, if you ask an SEO guy to work on your site and he gives you a screenshot of your blog on the first page of Google, that may be true for his or her account, but you may see something completely different. That’s how powerful the implications are for this new method. So be aware.

– it looks at other popular social sites (in this case Twitter and Flickr) and sees whether you own accounts currently signed in to. It links several popular social networks to G+ including Flickr, Twitter, Quora, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo!, and more. I hope it starts linking Tumblr and Pinterest soon. This makes me wonder whether sites like Path and Instagram should have official web versions for showing content (apart from Followgram) so they can get linked and indexed.

– Your “SEO” is only as good as how engaging you are with your content. There you have it — that is still the core ideal of “relevant content” but this time tied to your friends and what they share as well. If you +1 something, it means that you’re going to want more of that in your search results. In the same way, if you spam a friend, he or she can easily un-friend you and that’s it — bye bye social graph. Talk about tailored search.

– This new algorithm allows you to flourish in your preferred social space (as long as you have a Google+ profile HAHA!) whether it be a blog, Twitter, Quora, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. In other words, “blogging” is not the foundation of Web 2.0 (or whatever it’s called nowadays).

In short, for those of you saying that Google+ is useless and boring compared to Facebook, think again. Your site’s SEO will be determined by how much time you’ve invested in G+, the type of friends that you have, and what they share. Welcome to the new search. Now stop selling links.

Here you go –> CONNECT YOUR ACCOUNTS NOW.

That is how I understand it. I’d love to see how social search unfolds in the next few weeks and months. Comments, reactions most welcome.

New Media is all about conversation. Spam NEVER talks back.

I recommend Stowe Boyd’s post on PR Spam. In the Philippine context, what he’s saying is that PR practitioners should engage bloggers and journalists through social tools like Twitter or Facebook, and not through the email inbox. That way, it looks more like an invitation to join in on the conversation, with our time well spent in listening to a pitch. Stowe wants PR practitioners to stop spamming inboxes:

Continue reading “New Media is all about conversation. Spam NEVER talks back.”