Me: “That’s great! Online advertising is the best way to reach a huge customer base.  So, Imaginary Restaurant Manager, who do you want to advertise too?”

Manager: “How can I reach everybody?”

Mr. Imaginary Restaurant Manager might seem crazy but for his business he actually has the right idea.  He should be diversifying his marketing strategy.  One of the biggest challenges I face when meeting new clients is to get them to think about the demographics they want to reach.  I worked for a movie theater promoting a local midnight film festival.  They spent lots of money on newspaper ads and a large display at a local county fair.  While they might catch some eyes, the odds are those aren’t going to catch the audience going to the movies at midnight.  If they had done a little more market research they could have used their ad budget in much smarter ways.

So what does Mr. Restaurant Manager do when he wants to successfully go after a diverse market?  If you can afford it, focus grouping is a great way to see if things are working.  If you don’t want to shell out the cash, social media can be a great tool.  You can use Twitter, and Facebook to get people to take online surveys and even do some in house surveying of customers.  If you can get a broad spectrum of people to take the survey you can compile the data into the standard 4 quads, Woman under 35, Woman over 35, Men over 35, Men under 35.  This is how advertising agencies and focus group managers see you.

C compile your data into these quads and look at a few basic questions. For restaurants and hotels it’s “Would you recommend this establishment,” and “Would this be a first choice to go in the future.  For retail it might be, “Is this place your first choice to go for (insert product).”  Look at 100 people, 25 in each quad, and take a look at that big question.   That’s the bottom line that advertising people look at when they decide how to change their ad strategy.

Your main goal is to reach double digits in the “first choice” question.   If you have successful 4 quad advertising the odds are you are doing pretty well in your business but that’s a difficult thing to accomplish.   (Neither the NFL or NBA have double digits in all 4 quads.  The only sport to do it is major league baseball.)  Double digits in all four quads means your advertising is working.

The most likely scenario is that one or two of your quads can are a little bit lower than the others.  If you are a restaurant and Women over 35 is low you might want to gear your advertising to represent your place as a family restaurant since that demographic is also where you get a good idea of what kids are seeing.  (Kids are notoriously difficult to track considering they are spending through their parents and don’t usually have great internet access)  If you are lacking the Women under 35 range then you could try some ads that show how your place would be great for a “Girls Night Out.”  Advertise some drink specials on Facebook or Twitter.

On the other side if you find yourself lacking in the men under 35 demo you may want to show less ads about families and children and start advertising your place as a little more hip.  You could start a funny video contest on Facebook and YouTube for example.  If you have trouble getting the Over 35 guys you could try showing that your place has a traditional feel.  That’s when you try some newspaper ads, and maybe some radio.  It’s all about picking the right medium and the right audience for your message.

Former New Line Cinema executive and current online publisher Jeff Kats (www.geekweeklive.com) said, “All this tracking data is the biggest tool an advertising exec has and is what they use to figure out what needs to be changed.”  Thanks to social media and the internet you can now have this data in the palm of your hands and adjust your advertising accordingly.  All it takes is 100 survey takers, 25 in each quad, for you to take your advertising to the next level.

www.foodservicewarehouse.com/education/restaurant-marketing/demographics

gossmark.blogspot.com/2008/04/new-take-on-restaurant-demographics

findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3190/is_41_39/ai_n15727597/

In a nutshell Google Me is a social network that doesn’t have the restrictions that come with G-Mail like Google Buzz did. Other than what it doesn’t have, Google is playing it low-key and letting the speculation run rampant and spread word for them. All they are saying is that it will be a much simpler networking tool without all the games and spam messages. (Roughly the same thing Facebook said when they went up against MySpace.)

This would actually be Google’s third try at running a social network. The first try was way back in 2004 when Facebook was in its infancy. The Orkut caught on in Latin America but was a dud in the United States and Google Buzz was drowned out in complaints of privacy breaches and glitches that revealed private data. Of course you don’t get to be a company as big as Google without learning from your mistakes, right?

Google has had a habit hyping up their new products. Every year Google has a new and revolutionary product and sometimes that works in their favor and sometimes it doesn’t in the case of Google Buzz it just didn’t live up to its hype. As I said, this time Google is keeping quiet about exactly what Google Me is, preferring to let to build a groundswell by using sites like Wired. Com and G4tv to get people talking about what exactly what they have coming.

Google certainly learned the value of picking a good time to launch. Facebook has been getting some bad press recently for breaches in privacy and information exposing glitches. There’s even a movie coming out in the fall that could cause Facebook and the people behind it some headaches in the media (See trailer) If Google can spin Facebook’s bad press into good press for them this could be the break they’ve been waiting for.

So how does Facebook respond to all this? If I were their marketing wizard I would publicize the new privacy setting and talk about cracking down on spammers and bots.  I would promote Facebook like they did back when they took on MySpace.  They were the place to hold conversations, stay in touch with friends, and above all downplay all the bells and whistles that they’ve added over time and focus on the networking aspects.

One of the reason’s Facebook has been so successful is that it has shown a remarkable ability to adapt to what people want. When Twitter became a hit, Facebook quickly retooled their front page to assimilate with their ideas. If Google is going to beat Facebook it better do something that catches on quickly and surprises Facebook by doing something fairly innovative.  They said Google Buzz would be revolutionary but it turned out to be just another version of 4-Square using your G-Mail account.

Google has said they will launch Google Me later this year.   The odds are we’ll know pretty quickly whether or not it’s a success.   A massive launch like this is either a hit right out of the gate or it’s nothing and there are only so many times Google can announce they are taking on social networking before people stop listening so this could be their last shot at it.  As far as your own advertising dollars there could very well be a downturn in Facebook traffic as these privacy complaints pile up.  If internet privacy becomes a big issue Facebook will most likely find themselves doing some major damage control.  If Google Me can set itself apart from the rest it could be an interesting way to get your message out there.

news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20009159-265.html

edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/06/28/facebook.attitude/?fbid=EcJX7RW-7kT

www.inrumor.com/in/all/will-google-me-compete-facebook/

mashable.com/2010/06/30/google-me-rumors/

A few minor features it includes:

• Linkifying twitter text — adds links to #hash tags, @replys and standard links.
• TimeAgo function — The twitter API sends the time the tweet was created using a funky time format. This function returns it in a more pretty form such as “3 hours and 26 minutes ago.”
• Loading icon until tweets are received from the twitter API.
• Fade-in (and out) javascript effect.
• Gets users avatar

As far as the jQuery templating was concerned, the process is very easy to setup.

First, you take your markup that will be the template and add it between two script tags at the top/bottom of your page. For the “type” attribute of the script, set it to “text/html”. Next inside your template replace the content you want to be dynamic with the following syntax: {%= variableName %}. You’ll notice the opening and closing tags, the equal sign (which is used to write the variable to the screen), and the variable name. Also, make sure you remember the variable names, because we will be using them later when we load this template in our javascript. Also, note that any code you put between {% %} tags will be rendered as javascript.

I am unable to include script tags inside this post, but I’ll add in the html so you can see what it looks like:

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{% if($i == 0){ %}

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{% }else{ %}

<div class="tweetCntr mt30">

{% } %}

<div class="avatarCntr"><img class="avatar" src="{%= avatar %}" alt="avatar" /></div>

<div class="textCntr">

        

{%= text %}



<div class="extras">

            <span class="username">{%= user %}</span>

            <span class="time">{%= timeAgo %}</span></div>

</div>

</div>

In the beginning of the template  you will see I have some conditionals set up; those are just plain ole javascript conditionals. One last thing, the variable $i is a variable fromt he templating plugin that counts the number of iterations of this specific template. Typically we will send our templates an array of objects and this variable keeps count of which object we are on.

Pretty simple, right?

The next part to getting the templating going is to initialize it in our javascript. In the code below I have a function that gets called after the twitter API returns its data. The variable “data” holds all of the twitter data, so any properties within that object are ones assigned via the API.

Now the first thing we have to do is to create an array of objects that we will pass to the template we just made. In this case, I have a for loop set up that iterates over an array of objects that the twitter API sent me back. In the for loop, I create another object that holds the key-value pairs I will be sending into the template. The two function you see in there, linkify() and timeAgo(), are the functions I was speaking about in the introduction. After the loop completes, we will have an array of objects, and the keys to all of the objects correspond to the variable names we used in our template.

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//this function gets used as a call back in the getTweets function call - after json callback

    startTwitter = function(data){



        var dataArr = [];



        for(a = 0; a < data.length; a++){

            dataArr.push({avatar: data[a]['user']['profile_image_url'], text: linkify(data[a].text), timeAgo: timeAgo(data[a]['created_at'], null, 4), user: data[a].user.screen_name});

        }



        $('#tweetMarkup').render(dataArr).appendTo('#tweetsCntr');



        twitterObj.loaderOff();

    }

Easy enough.

Next, we grab the jQuery object of our template – $(‘#tweetMarkup’) – and then call the .render() function while passing in our dataArr we created in the for loop. The render() function returns us our templates rendered into a big string, and the .appendTo() function adds the string into the DOM and prints it onto the page.

Well thats about it, I hope someone out there finds this little demo useful. I have attached a .zip file of the code so you can try it out. I also had some help writing the timeAgo and linkify functions, which is documented in the main.js file.

Demo Page Files (.zip)

Note: I’m aware that its unfair to test a beta version of Safari, an official release of IE8, and an official release of Firefox. However, I justify this by saying when you try to download any 3 of these browsers these are the default options for downloading.

Acid 2 Test
The first test is the popular Acid 2 Test

The first bit of good news is that all 3 pass the Acid 2 Test.

Acid 3 Test
The next test is the new Acid 3 Test.

Below are screenshots of the individual results for the Acid 3 Test.

Safari 4 Acid 3

[caption id="attachment_647" align="alignleft" width="150" caption=" Firefox 3.0 Acid 3"][/caption]

IE 8 Acid 3

The results here were pretty predictable, Safari 4 passes with flying colors, Firefox is a little behind, and IE 8 comes dead last.

CSS Selectors
I used the CSS3.info CSS Selector Test for this one.

Below are the individual results from the CSS Selectors Test.

Safari 4 CSS Selectors

[caption id="attachment_652" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Firefox 3 CSS Selectors"][/caption]

IE 8 CSS Selectors

Yet again another predictable conclusion. Safari 4 passes all of them, Firefox 3 comes behind, and IE 8 finishes dead last. What really hurts is how far back IE is on CSS selectors. I can see this becoming a pain for years to come.

Javascript Benchmarks
I used the Sunspider test for the Javascript Benchmarks.

Below are the individual results from the Sunspider Javascript Benchmarks.

Safari 4 Benchmarks

[caption id="attachment_656" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Firefox 3 Benchmarks"][/caption]

IE 8 Benchmarks

I do believe that with Firefox 3.1 (errr, 3.5) We should see Firefox pull back within range, however as of now We start to see that IE 8 isn’t doing so bad. In fact its very promising that its JScript engine could run some very powerful web applications now and in the near future.

Website Optimization Performance Handling
To me the king of web optimization is Steve Souders. You may know him as the creator of Yslow. He’s come up with this very handy way of testing how well browsers handle web optimization techniques. For end users this means the browser shows you your pages faster and for developers its a way of finding out if our optimization efforts will do any good. I’ve run his UA profiler on all 3 browsers. Here are the results.

Below are the individual results from Steve Souder’s UA Profiler Tests.

Safari 4 UA Profiler

[caption id="attachment_667" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Firefox 3 UA Profiler"][/caption]

IE 8 UA Profiler

IE 8 seems to stand up on its own in this one. However, there doesn’t really seem to be any clear winner. Each browser has its strength and weaknesses.

Well it does seem that IE 8 is an improvement and even managed to stay even or beat the current Firefox 3.0 browser. However, as I think many of us anticipated, there’s not going to be parades in IE 8′s honor.

What kind of conclusions can you draw from these tests, if any?

Update 3/20/09
These original tests were meant to see what IE 8 is doing compared to the current releases of its competitors, but there seems to be a concern that Firefox 3.0 isn’t a fair competitor to Safari 4. So if you’re curious to see how well IE 8 is doing against the latest beta versions of Safari (a.k.a Webkit) and Firefox I’ve compiled some new charts below to show the results of the same tests.
Note: I didn’t include the results of the Acid 2 test again since all 3 browsers passed it completely.

Below are the individual results of the Sunspider Javascript Benchmarks

Webkit

[caption id="attachment_689" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Firefox 3.1b3"][/caption]

IE 8

As expected Firefox comes right back into the game with its latest beta. In fact its a clear winner of the UA Profiler test.

The canvas tag is most simply an element of HTML5 (HTML4 is the current standard) that allows for dynamic scriptable rendering of bitmap images over time. Sound familiar? cough:flash:cough Currently with HTML we’re stuck with images, boxes, and text. Canvas unleashes all that.

In Canvas you can run video, with no initialization of any player, no plugin needed. You can have perfectly consistent rendering of any font across all OS’s and browsers. You can draw complex vector shapes with gradients and pixel by pixel manipulations.

Examples
Just to get across a quick sample of the sheer power of the canvas element download Firefox 3.1 and give these links a shot.

Mario Cart game with Canvas
http://www.nihilogic.dk/labs/mariokart/

Real Time Green Screen Chroma Keying with Canvas
https://developer.mozilla.org/samples/video/chroma-key/index.xhtml

Bespin: An online text editor by Mozilla with Canvas to render the text
https://bespin.mozilla.com/

iwork.com – Apple’s online sharing tool for iWork Documents uses Canvas to render the document itself in the browser to ensure perfect representations of the actual document.
http://www.apple.com/iwork/iwork-dot-com/

280 Slides: Online Presentation Application. Dare I say better than Apple’s Keynote, and built with javascript none-the-less. It uses canvas to draw the slides.
http://280slides.com

You can even create 3d objects with a little javascript engine
http://www.pascarello.com/canvas/KeyBoard3DCube.html

Cross Browser Support
I know what you’re thinking, “What about IE, its useless if there is no IE support.”
No version of IE supports canvas. Currently IE8 beta doesn’t even support canvas. However, there are workarounds.

One using SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics):
http://me.eae.net/archive/2005/12/29/canvas-in-ie/

One ironically using Flash as a bridge:
http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/flash-canvas/

The folks at Cappuccino use combinations of various Technologies to accomplish what canvas can do on all browsers.
http://cappuccino.org ( http://280slides.com is an example of this.)

The last remaining puzzle is, “How do we lower the barrier of entry for canvas?”

Currently you need to work in some javascript and code out all your canvas work. This sucks. Canvas is powerful enough to require a good GUI to create with. Much like Flash. This is why Mozilla is working on a program called Thunderhead. Thunderhead is not out yet, but its described to be a canvas/js GUI toolkit. Perhaps this will give designers the ultimate HTML design tool? Allow them to create with tools they’re used to in Photoshop and Flash, but the document be the element.

*The factors that the search engines use to establish Geo Targeting are the geographical intent of a searcher and the geographical relevance of the content.  These factors include (but aren’t limited to) the domain (i.e. .com vs .co.uk), web server location, inbound link profile, content language, Google local listing and Webmaster Tool details. If you’re interested in hearing more drop us an email or call me at 312.399.7657.