eCommerce and

Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz received a tip from New York retailer Oh Nuts that Google had visited their store location to take pictures.  The purpose of these pictures was for their upcoming Google Maps feature “Google Store Views”.  The retailer explained that pictures were taken in six foot increments in all directions from inside the store.  The idea is to provide Google Maps users with the ability to use Google Street views to get to the store and then navigate through the store with Google Store Views.  In addition to the images that were taken of the store in general, product specific images were taken as well.

Pictures were taken of Google taking pictures from within the store and posted by Barry:

I can’t wait to know my way around the newest attraction before even going for the first time!

For the best prices, on the largest selection of faucets, from your favorite brands like Kohler, Danze, and American Standard shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

• It’s always nice to find web applications that make design easier and Rounded CSS Boxes is no exception.  This is a tool that generates images, HTML code, and CSS code to create rounded boxes for web pages.  You can learn more about the tool and its uses here.


• Copyblogger is starting a Third Tribe project and a course on what smart marketers are doing in 2010.


• It is difficult to take criticisms about your work, but being defensive about criticisms will only hinder future performance.  It is a situation that comes up more often than not in business, and Miriam Ellis does a good job of pointing out how this type of logic can ultimately hold you back.


• Seth Godin published Random rules for ideas worth spreading.

For the best prices, on the largest selection of faucets, from your favorite brands like Kohler, Danze, and American Standard shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

• We knew it was coming, but how is inflation showing itself?


• When building a website matrix to compare products usability is just as important as content otherwise the matrix itself is of little use to the consumer.  Get Elastic compared 17 designs in an effort to help retailers improve upon their comparison tools and features.


• The Pitfalls Of Budget-Constrained Bidding.


• Do you have your bases covered in your marketing team?  Have you built a team that compliments one another?


• Outspoken Media’s Lisa Barone broke Twitter’s debut of Local Trend functionality.  While many Twitter users are not able to utilize the feature yet, there is a lot of excitement surrounding the new feature.  Lisa’s screenshot can be seen below:

For the best prices, on the largest selection of faucets, from your favorite brands like Kohler, Danze, and American Standard shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

• Lucy Langdon published 50 Examples of Great Blog Engagement.  The article uses current blogs as examples so not only is the post valuable for new bloggers looking to find their niche, but also a great resource for those looking to add to their Reader.


• Having trouble convincing the powers that be that SEO should be a focus within your organization?  SEOmoz posted an article from their partners at Distilled that outlines a strategy for promoting SEO within the company on a role by role basis.


• What can a corporate blog do for a company?


• With a new decade come new and sometimes lofty predictions for the decade ahead, like Google being obsolete?


• FutureNow posted a great article on How To Loosen Up the Tone of Marketing Emails.

The possibilities are endless with a bathroom remodel. Discover your classic side with a clawfoot tub, experiment with fresh bathroom vanities and coordinate it all with matching faucets. Shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for all of your bathroom needs.

• As we near the end of the year it is always interesting to make comparisons between technologies, companies and news that have impacted the year.  For many years now Microsoft and Google have been two companies that have been on the list of comparisons because every year they make changes that affect our day to day lives.  This year is no different, and in fact both Google and Microsoft have made considerable updates in 2009 that will continue to impact users for years to come.  Garrett Rogers of ZDNet takes a closer look at the changes made by both companies in 2009.
• Last minute shoppers faced a DDoS attack that took down Amazon, Wal-Mart, Expedia and others on Christmas Eve.
• SEO Gadget posted a Christmas remedy for correcting indexed 404 pages as well as a SEO checklist.  It’s worth the read, “If you’re interested in good housekeeping and getting your fresh new content into search engine indexes quickly and often” as Baxter puts it.
• BNET writer Geoffrey James released the 10 Worst Brand Blunders of 2009.  Among my favorites was Accenture.



As you can see from the screenshot above BNET made their own update to the Accenture logo.

• Finally, check out this video on Microsoft's vision on the future of brick and mortar retailing:

Kohler is arguably one of the most innovative brands in the home improvement industry. The new Karbon faucet has completely transformed the kitchen and more specifically revolutionized the kitchen faucet. Meanwhile Kohler seems to effortlessly create bathroom fixtures that are not only sleek but save water, like the Escale toilet.

Yesterday was an exciting day for Google and its leaders alike.  Google announced real time search.  A much awaited feature many users have been expecting since Google and Bing made deals with Twitter earlier in the year.  The new feature hasn’t been released to everyone at this time but can be seen via YouTube and in the screenshot below.

Google Trends was also updated with a new Hot Topics area which is based on real time data.

Meanwhile, Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO who once described Twitter as a “poor man’s email system” was busy attempting to join Twitter himself.  I say attempt because the profile setup didn’t go as smoothly as one would think...

“He first logged on with the handle "eschmidt0", prompting a cyber-diss from high-profile New York tech executive Anil Dash:

As Ryan, the author of the post at Gawker goes on to note, “It looks like Schmidt also received some help from the Poor Man's Email Service's Rich Man's Identity Authenticator, because he's now got a ‘Verified Account.’ Throwing his (semi-)celebrity weight around at Twitter Inc.? Schmidt's starting to get the swing of things.”

The possibilities are endless with a bathroom remodel. Discover your classic side with a clawfoot tub, experiment with fresh bathroom vanities and coordinate it all with matching faucets. Shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for all of your bathroom needs.

• Cyber Monday outperformed Black Friday in online retail sales this year.  This may not have been true for other internet retailers in the past but this was something that we expected and have seen before.  It’s not surprising that “shoppers bought 10% more items per order online” when the online shopping experience is not only convenient, inexpensive, and comfortable.  Not to mention online shoppers don’t have to worry about getting in fist fights over the great deals to be had!


• Forbes Woman recommended Thirty Women Entrepreneurs To Follow On Twitter.  The list is well rounded; here are a few of my favorites:                                                                                                                                                                                    
  • @BrandYou: Cindy Ratzlaff is a marketing strategist who tweets about how to create buzz for your brand. 9,419 followers.
    @Bernadeen: Bernadeen McLeod is a business coach who tweets small business tips, articles and resources. 3,116 followers.
    @KairaRouda: Kaira is an award winning author who tweets about how to build a unique and genuine brand. 4,510 followers.
    @NikkiPilkington: Nikki owns an Internet marketing company and tweets about search engine optimization. 8,884 followers.

• CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt wrote a piece opposite the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, calling for the Journal and other newspapers to take responsibility for their own failures.  It’s surprising that the article was printed considering that the article was directed at Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Wall Street Journal, who has openly accused Google of stealing his content.  Here’s some of what Schmidt had to say:

“With dwindling revenue and diminished resources, frustrated newspaper executives are looking for someone to blame. Much of their anger is currently directed at Google, whom many executives view as getting all the benefit from the business relationship without giving much in return. The facts, I believe, suggest otherwise.

Google is a great source of promotion. We send online news publishers a billion clicks a month from Google News and more than three billion extra visits from our other services, such as Web Search and iGoogle. That is 100,000 opportunities a minute to win loyal readers and generate revenue—for free. In terms of copyright, another bone of contention, we only show a headline and a couple of lines from each story. If readers want to read on they have to click through to the newspaper's Web site. (The exception are stories we host through a licensing agreement with news services.) And if they wish, publishers can remove their content from our search index, or from Google News.

The claim that we're making big profits on the back of newspapers also misrepresents the reality. In search, we make our money primarily from advertisements for products. Someone types in digital camera and gets ads for digital cameras. A typical news search—for Afghanistan, say—may generate few if any ads. The revenue generated from the ads shown alongside news search queries is a tiny fraction of our search revenue."

• Yahoo! has posted their Year in Review, and with that the Top Mobile Searches of 2009.  Topping the list was Transformers starlet Megan Fox.


• Voting for the Top 100 online marketers of 2009 is open until December 13, 2009.  Plenty of the names on the list should look familiar so it may not be easy to cast your vote…

Kohler is arguably one of the most innovative brands in the home improvement industry. The new Karbon faucet has completely transformed the kitchen and more specifically revolutionized the kitchen faucet. Meanwhile Kohler seems to effortlessly create bathroom fixtures that are not only sleek but save water, like the Escale toilet.

• Optimalogica blog recommends a reconciliation system for making financial decisions and experimental sales decisions.


• Gross National Happiness has been measured, and Facebook’s Prototype confirms that we are in fact less happy on Monday’s.


• Can’t keep up with all of the social media, internet and search options available at any given moment?  Mike Moran can help you figure out what to ignore in Internet Marketing.


• Google Reader adds Magic to your settings.

My personal favorite this week, courtesy of SEOmoz:

Sam Niccolls, SEOmoz blogger, writes "This e-mail from a hopelessly confused webmaster to a competitor is worth its weight in gold."

The possibilities are endless with a bathroom remodel. Discover your classic side with a clawfoot tub, experiment with fresh bathroom vanities and coordinate it all with matching faucets. Shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for all of your bathroom needs.

• Amazon offers same day delivery.  Columns like the Consumerist ask questions like “Will you ever leave the house again?”


• You don’t have to love the Dallas Mavericks to appreciate Mark Cuban’s humor every once in a while.  For instance he mocks the FTC’s recent disclosure requirements placed on bloggers when he visits his local IHOP and posts about it, quite comical but point proven.


• When performing MVT or A/B tests it’s easy to make simple mistakes that can really skew the data, this article does a good job of outlining those areas so tests can be designed properly from the start.


• First they come out with these weird commercials that no one I have talked to has been able to relate to and then they hire lap dancers for Hack Day?  Is Yahoo! struggling to find their identity?
  

For the best prices, on the largest selection of faucets, from your favorite brands like Kohler, Danze, and American Standard shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

• Does your website need a television series?  Some have figured out how to do it right, meaning profitably, but it’s not easy.


• A few more reasons why your website sucks debuted today.  One point that really caught my attention was the connection made between where site search filters are placed relative to the content that the filters affect.  The author, Jack Aaronson, makes an obvious point, but one that we need to keep in mind as we design for users.  He states, “Visual design does more to enforce the notion of "this thing goes with that thing" than anything else on the page. If there is a content block (like search results) and a box that shows filterable attributes for that content, make sure they're visually connected in some way. Otherwise, an incredibly useful feature won't be used or understood.”


• Want great employees?  Try the Zappos strategy and offer them $2,000.00 to quit.


• Predictions still say growth in 2010 for eCommerce.


• The holidays are coming.  It’s time to get prepared and lay out marketing strategies.  Search Engine Land posted a great article with five tips for doing so.  Five tips may not sound like a lot but they have packed a ton of information within each tip to help marketers get prepared.
  

Kohler is arguably one of the most innovative brands in the home improvement industry. The new Karbon faucet has completely transformed the kitchen and more specifically revolutionized the kitchen faucet. Meanwhile Kohler seems to effortlessly create bathroom fixtures that are not only sleek but save water, like the Escale toilet.