Breaking through the noise to launch a new brand in today’s marketplace requires harnessing traditional marketing techniques as well as the unexpected. Reaching users online is relatively straightforward, but building emotional connections, staying relevant and delivering value is considerably more challenging. Hear from Kirsten Ward, Director of Digital Advertising, Microsoft as she discusses the challenges faced and innovation by Microsoft to build the Bing brand and steadily gain market share from Google and Yahoo.

Digital CMO Series: Bing – Building a New Brand in the Digital Age.

I have finally decided to move my blog to a new platform (WordPress) and start blogging from www.gavinlobo.com. WordPress gives me a ton of cool Social, SEO and Blog technology that Google Blogger just did not allow for. I can also manage my posts more effectively moving forward. I love the new Tag Cloud on the right of the blog posts and have been working on optimizing the cloud over the last day or so.

I plan to posting a few tests blogs in the next few days just to get a hang of things. I love the clean MAC look of the blog and request that you comment on any issues that you find while browsing the site. I also have my own domain name which is supremely cool! I finally managed to snag www.gavinlobo.com after a long wait.

With so much time on my hands I have decided to try vBlogging and Youtube video marketing to further my understanding with regards to building online traffic, SEO and natural search. Watch out for more video from me in the weeks ahead.

Build Your LinkedIn Network | Insights by Gavin Lobo

With Googles stock price at $412 US you would expect that the most if not all of their product releases are No.1 World Wide. I found an interesting piece of research specific to Google product rankings:

*Google Talk – The ten-month-old instant-messaging system ranks No.10 in the world, with just two percent as many users as market leader MSN.

*Google Maps – Although it ranks No.2 worldwide, viewership is 20% less than market leader MapQuest.

*Blog Search This nine-month old web log service was expected to bury market-leading Technorati. It gets less than one-fifth as many users.

*Google Finance Three-months after its launch, the site ranks No.40 in the U.S.—despite strong initial buzz. Yahoo! Finance remains number one.

*Orkut The social-networking site gets less than one percent as many U.S. visitors as MySpace.com. [Source: BusinessWeek, July 10, 2006, “So Much Fanfare, So Few Hits"].

You can read more here: http://internet.seekingalpha.com/article/13313

A new web search tool from Google. Very cool and I love the speed at which you can access video’s online.

I did a search for Bell Canada and came up with this: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=%22Bell+Canada%22

I guess the folks from Nortel uploaded the clip to Google Video.

This can be a cool way to get your business message out. Start uploading case studies, seminars etc… online for people to search and download.

Mr. Lobo

Exclusive to the Mr. Lobo Blog – Mr. Lobo is a proud owner of a condo in the Menkes built Spectrum 2 Condominium Complex.

You can find Mr. Lobo walking around his place of employment with a blank smile (comes from knowing that the down payment means sure poverty from this day forth!) trying to calculate his monthly expenses.

The entire process took about three months and has now finally come to an end. Though the process of organizing ones finances, begging for family loans and praying for divine intervention have just begun.

Thank you to all those that assisted in the process and made another one of Mr. Lobo’s life goals come true. You can expect more giddy blogs about Mr. Lobo’s condo experiences in the weeks ahead.

If you read the sales blurb below you will realize (really quickly) that I have the “BEST” damn condo in the world! My own personal pie in the sky…

Have some condo insights/knowledge you would like to share with Mr. Lobo the condo novice – please feel free to leave me a comment.

View From Above – Satellite Me!

The Menkes Sales Blurb

Spectrum’s two dramatic condominium towers comprise a total of 500 suites and are connected by a sophisticated central lobby. Its curved glass walls dominate the North York skyline from a prominent vantage point at Yonge Street and Highway 401.

smithm
Originally uploaded by Mr.Lobo.

When you feel a deep pain in your side or in your right ass cheek (Where one would carry a purse or wallet) try the Smith Manoeuvre. Lately with condo shopping top of mind I have been actively seeking out ways (i.e. strategies) to make my Canadian mortgage interest payments tax deductible.

So off I went to Google to find myself some wisdom and found myself reading about the Smith Manoeuvre. The strategy sounds intriguing enough that I have started to collect information (That’s free information) on the book and methodology. Since I do not know much about the “Manoeuvre” yet I have provided a few links below for you to read.

Link 1: Betting the house

Link 2: Can you slash your income tax?

Link 3: PR Financial Forums

If anyone has used the “Manoeuvre” and had some success or otherwise please do leave me a comment/contact and we can chat.

Mr. Lobo

How to Search for MP3s using Google – Automated!

A very cool piece of Internet software/programming that you should check out.

You can search MP3, Video, Photo files… whooo hooo!

Mr. Lobo

We won’t care about storage anymore – online or offline

Gmail is your only email client and everyone has a Google Toolbar installed

File structures will become a thing of the past because everything can be found in mere seconds with Google Search (Desktop, Internet, Video, Maps, Journals, etc…)

Google either buys of Firefox or gets enough of it’s engineers to submit code to the project at Mozilla that Firefox takes over IE market share

Google will release an operating system based on Linux – which will be simple to use and user friendly

Google will buy of Sun Microsystems – StarOffice Suite and integrate it into their Operating System

Google software will be free as long as you agree to targeted ads (Ad free for a small monthly fee)

Google enters the Server/Mainframe market – because they have the Mind Power sufficient to kill any competition

Google decides not to buy Microsoft but Sun Microsystems (The final blow that pushes Microsoft of the edge!)

Google Juice
Originally uploaded by Mr.Lobo.

The folks over at Googgler (Google + Blogger) have addressed the crappy Blogger speed issue over the last few weeks. What is of interest to me is the following:

- Not a lot of Public companies admit there is an issue this quickly and provide concrete steps to rectify the pain point

- They are feeling the same pain as all the other Bloogers out there when they have to make a post – This makes it personal and palatable

- They identify the issue of their servers needing more Juice and are working to solve it

Kudos go out to the team at Googgler for their efforts.

Mr. Lobo

Please see below the Blogger post:

“I just recieved an email from a Blogger user named Wayne asking if we were going to address some of the slowness issues with Blogger. We do still update Blogger Status (although there was a recent glitch with it). Performance is a huge priority for us and we’re adding a bunch of new machines right now to speed things up. New machines are not an issue because here at Google we can add them quite smoothly as needed. The real issue is power – actual electricity, if you can believe it. So now we’re adding more power in addition to more machines.

We use Blogger for this blog and many of the people on our team use Blogger for their own, personal blogs. We don’t have a super-special employee server that gives us preference over anyone else so we are just as frustrated with slowness and performance problems. That being said, we are just as eager as you to make this fix so things will be fast again.”