AJ Batac | Online Marketing at Canada's Web Shop

Author Archive

Quick Post: Google now offering storage as low as $0.25/GB

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

If you are like me who receive a lot of emails and uploads photos at Picasa, then additional storage is just a must. We are in luck! Google is now offering extra storage for as low as $0.25 per gigabyte. If you’ll ask me, I think that’s reasonably cheap.

Here’s Google’s price list.
20 GB ($5.00 USD per year)*
80 GB ($20.00 USD per year)
200 GB ($50.00 USD per year)
400 GB ($100.00 USD per year)
1 TB ($256.00 USD per year)
2 TB ($512.00 USD per year)
4 TB ($1,024.00 USD per year)
8 TB ($2,048.00 USD per year)
16 TB ($4,096.00 USD per year) Read more...

Tags: google, google storage
Posted in Tools, Tips and Tricks | No Comments »

Google Dashboard: What Google Knows About You

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Google just made it easier to see what it knows about us. The company now presents all information it knows about how you use their services and they made it very easy for you to find it.

The Google Dashboard covers all their products and services and tells you in brief detail on how you use them. Some of the services listed there are Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Orkut, YouTube, Picasa, Reader, Alerts, History, Blogger, Tasks and many more.

Here’s a video overview of Google Dashboard below:

Tags: dashboard, google
Posted in Tools, Tips and Tricks | No Comments »

[Light Post Friday] Dane Cook’s Local Ads on NBA Live

Friday, October 16th, 2009

You might know this already, but it’s the first time for me to see a local ad being posted on an NBA Live PlayStation game. Here are some screencaps I took for Dane Cook’s show at MTS Centre, Winnipeg.

Great use of geotargeting. What’s your online marketing strategy?

Tags: canada, dane cook, geotargeting, manitoba, mts centre, winnipeg
Posted in Online Marketing, Tools, Tips and Tricks | 2 Comments »

[Quick Post] Warning: Don’t change your Twitter username, email address or password

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Twitter is currently investigating on a problem. And while this is being resolved, Twitter advises everyone not to change their username, email address or password or the bug will lock your account out.

From Twitter:

We’re currently researching reports from users who are locked out after trying to reset their passwords or change their email address or user names. This seems to affect new users as well as long term users; we do not advise changing your user name, email address, or password at this time. We will update Status with more news as it becomes available.

Posted in Tools, Tips and Tricks | No Comments »

Dear Canadians, smile! You are on Google Street View

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

Google Street View, a feature of Google Maps that shows high-resolution street-level images on the internet, has gone live in several Canadian cities.

The service is now available in Toronto, Calgary, Montreal, Quebec City, Halifax, Vancouver, Squamish, B.C., Whistler, B.C., Ottawa, Kitchener, Ont., and Waterloo, Ont.

The service, which is already available in cities in the U.S., the U.K., Spain, Australia, Japan and several other countries, provides close-up, 360-degree views of city streets as they would be seen by someone driving along them. The images are linked to the company’s Google Maps and Google Earth applications.

Google Wave: What is it, its potential uses, how to get it and a screenshot

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

What is Google Wave?

Keeping it simple, Google Wave is a tool for real-time communication and collaboration.

How does it look like?

Here is a screenshot of my account at Google Wave. Click on the image to preview it in full size.

List of potential uses for Google Wave

(Note that all of these are done in real-time. When I say real-time, I mean “real-time”. You will be able to see people type, delete characters, insert videos, games, plugins, photos and more right before your eyes on your browser without reloading.) Read more...

Tags: google, Google Wave, Invites, Nominations
Posted in Tools, Tips and Tricks | 1 Comment »

Quick Tip: How to know if your site is listed as suspicious by Google

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

First off, a “suspicious website” is a site that has malicious code or software that’s being downloaded and installed without a user’s consent. It can be both intentional and non-intentional and it’s you or your contractors responsibility to check as often as possible for these kinds of threats.

The implication of this is that you will lose visitors from Google if your site is listed as suspicious. That’s a fact. As soon as Google update their search index (their searchable content), they’ll remove your site from their search engine results page (SERP). Read more...

Tags: diagnostic, google, safe browsing, serp, suspicious
Posted in Tools, Tips and Tricks | No Comments »

Quick Tip: Redirect Your Misspelled Domain Names

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

We’ve written about how smart online companies use smart domain names a few weeks back and we’d like to give you another tip. Redirect your misspelled domain names to your main website. Why? Because it make sense and having it offline doesn’t help users.

Take this for example. Type http://www.futurshop.ca (without the ‘e’ on the word future) on your browser and you should see that the link is broken. For some users they would think, “What? Futureshop is down?” and some would simply close the browser and go away. End point, lost potential customer.

Quick tip: Spell check your website before putting it online

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Would you trust a web shop with a front page graphic like the one below?

inquieries

google-inquieries That’s why it is always a good idea to spell check your website before putting it online. Most word processors nowadays has built in spell-checker and when in doubt, always ask someone to proofread your site. Especially if you are selling cheap websites. It makes your visitors wonder if they will really get what they will pay for.

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Posted in Tools, Tips and Tricks, Web Design | No Comments »

Smart online companies use smart domain names

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Smart online companies anticipates a user’s mistakes even before they make them. Amazon.com, an American-based multinational electronic commerce company, proves this by getting domain name variations like…

http://wwwamazon.com (without the dot)
http://ww.amazon.com (missing one w)
http://wwww.amazon.com (four w’s)
http://www.amazn.com (no o)
http://www.amzn.com (no a and o)
http://www.amzon.com (no a)
and even
http://httpamazon.com (with an http)!

Why? Because users are impatient and gets easily frustrated thinking they got it right the first time but mistypes the domain name. This is where Amazon capitalizes on those kind of users and gives them the opportunity to redirect them to their main site http://www.amazon.com. Read more...

Tags: amazon, domain, domain name
Posted in Tools, Tips and Tricks | No Comments »