AutoBot, a Beijing startup that makes diagnostic tools for cars (not the robots in disguise), has raised a $6 million Series A from Gobi Partners and ABC Capital. The company will use the funding for marketing, hiring, and product research and development. Read More
Siri, Cortana and Alexa are robotic personal assistants, but they are also women. They live in your pockets, their skinny smart phone bodies executing your every command. They are intimate with you. But they are also, as Microsoft VP Joe Belfiore said at the Windows 10 keynote last week, “a member of your family.”
The internet is full of lies, hoaxes, and misinformation. And we, we are only human. Whether it’s with some dumb fake news site or a viral photo that won’t die or an misread Onion headline, we’ve all been a proven too gullible at some point. Tell us your most embarrassing story.
When Ricardo Brown from Spokane, Washington got his most recent bill from Comcast, he had an extra special reason to be dismayed. It wasn’t the pricey charges—we’re all used to that by now. No, it was that on this particular bill, Comcast appears to have misspelled his name. By replacing it with the word “Asshole.”
Lots of people get into gaming. Some just want an escape from reality, some play it for competitive reasons, and some play it in order to connect and to better understand a friend or family member. Recently a post made its way onto Reddit in which the man, a 50-something year old, recently got into World of Warcraft in a bid to get to know his son better.
According to the poster, “So im older (late 50’s) and my son used to play lots of WOW while he was recovering after getting hit by a mortar in iraq. Recently he passed away and I decided that I wanted to connect with areas of my sons life I never understood.” Unfortunately the game proved to be a tad complex for him which was why he started the thread, to reach out for help.
In what appeared to be a rather touching response, many gamers have since come forward to offer their help. Users on Reddit posted their condolences, and even posted links, tips, and suggestions on what was the best way for him to progress in the game. Some have even offered to “carry” the man to help get him through the game.
Safe to say the man was overwhelmed with happiness when he checked the thread that he had started. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the World of Warcraft community gather to mourn someone’s loss and to offer their help. We’ve also seen the community rally together in times of celebration as well. To that extent he wrote, “One of the biggest regrets I have was not doing more to meet my son in his world. I can clearly see what was so engrossing about the game. Thank you so very much. This means so much to me I can’t accurately describe it.”
Dad Gets Into World Of Warcraft To Better Understand His Son’s Life , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
We’re sure there are many of us out there who can’t wait for a future in which artificial intelligence gets to the point where our robots and computers can interact with us like they do in the movies. One the other hand we’re sure some of you might be worried we would end up with a Terminator-like outcome.
Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk has expressed his concerns and it seems that he’s not alone. Bill Gates recently expressed his own concerns and agreed with Musk. This was revealed during a Reddit AMA that he did earlier today in which Gates stated that he agreed with Musk and was wondering why there wasn’t more concern about such a possibility.
According to Gates, “I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence. First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don’t understand why some people are not concerned.”
That being said, Microsoft’s director of research Eric Horvitz seemed to disagree and called such an idea science fiction. “AI doomsday scenarios belong more in the realm of science fiction than science fact.” Regardless of which camp you’re in, Musk has recently donated $10 million towards research that would make AI “beneficial” for humans, which we can only assume means they won’t become machine gun-wielding robots bent on wiping out humanity.
Bill Gates Agrees With Elon Musk, Expresses Concern About AI , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
There are many carriers around the world, not just in the US, who advertises that they offer their customers unlimited data. To a certain extent that is true, but the catch is usually after you’ve exceed a particular amount of data, your speeds will be throttled, so while technically you get unlimited data, the slow speeds make it near impossible to use it at all.
That being said over in the US, the FTC does not seem too happy about carriers who advertise themselves as offering unlimited data and have recently slapped prepaid mobile provider TracFone with a $40 million fine for slowing down the speeds of their customers who believed that they had subscribed to the carrier’s unlimited data plan.
According to the FTC’s director of their Bureau of Consumer Protection, Jessica Rich, “The issue here is simple: When you promise consumers ‘unlimited,’ that means unlimited.” Rich later clarified that the issue was not so much about throttling speeds but rather false advertising. “This case is about false advertising. It’s not about throttling. We’re not challenging throttling in and of itself.”
Rich also stated that as long as the caveats of the carrier’s plans are made clear and have been disclosed properly to customers, these carriers can continue their practice. “If it’s clearly disclosed, if a company advertises unlimited, but very clearly discloses their practices with regard to throttling we would not challenge that action.”
FTC Unhappy About Carriers Who Falsely Advertise Unlimited Data Plans , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
There aren’t many work collaboration tools that you’d describe as being a joy to use, but Slack, the latest startup from Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield, actually manages to come close. Now in addition to slick text and document collaboration (…
While Facebook made waves last year with its investment in Oculus and WhatsApp, it continues to make most of its money from just plain ol’ Facebook. And, in particular, from mobile. In the last quarter of 2014, the social networking giant made $3.85 …
Terabytes are written about how to create great content every day.
It all flows from a few simple attributes.
Cut to the chase, tell a story and edit your content like Ben Bradlee.
Content Pain Points Every Business has to Come to Grips with
A budget is a moving target; start small, test the content ROI (is is getting read?), talk to your customers, monitor your conversion metrics, etc. – start with 20-30% of your overall budget.
How do you make content that the visitor wants to share? Key attributes: useful, emotion laden, factual, practical, newsjacks (events, moments in time, perspective).
Is your content distributed and published? A blog is not enough: you gotta do more.
In-house or outsourcing; or some combination of the two. Your probably better off with the latter.
Where do you find visuals to insert with your content? They are on your web site, embedded in your social channels and/or part of the visual story every employee tells with their profiles across the web.
What is SEO and how do we optimize our content. Use a keyword in your title and repeat it maybe once or twice on page of 300-700 words. Google understands more than you will ever know BTW.
Our time tested ten terrific rules to stun your competition, win friends and shift consumer behavior in your favor.
Rule #1 -blog with the best content you can produce, don’t waste time or resources on social media until your business has 30-50 blog posts completed.
Rule #2 – Brake Boredom’s hold on your brand. Great content comes down to structure, story and presentation.
Rule #3 – Jettison jargon when/where you find it. You know the stuff that makes your viewers’ turn away and embrace the dark force, otherwise known as the click of death in marketing jargon speak. God knows we marketers struggle with this problem. You are not alone!
Rule #4 – leave your local brand accent at home: write for a global audience. It’s the web right?
Rule #5 – write with your ears.
Rule #6 – be a mythic brand: serve customers, tell a good story and be passionate.
Rule #7 – be credible with your words when/if you can! Your writing has to stand on its own without endless facts and figures.
Rule #8 – give em the good with the bad. We all get sick of content with no grounding in reality whatsoever: “How I Made a Billion Working Ten Minutes a Day” Credible content, especially when targeting other businesses converts well when the on page content makes it clear you may not have all the answers.
Rule #9 – we are moving into a 2+2 world for smart content marketing. Readers want to know how your products and services work and add value to their business. Decisions are fraught with anxiety for many other biz execs who are weighing whether or not to use your services. So, tell them how you can help in measurable ways.
Rule #10 – embed calls to action in every piece of content that you write and share.
Rule #11 – see rule #1 and blog your ass off and publish aggressively with a take no prisoners rinse and repeat cycle.
Great Content is Embedded in the DNA of Your Company
Great content is more often than not a mythic beast that you have to work hard to breath life into.
It “lives” within each of you and the DNA of your company.
Creating great content is an iterative process and may not happen overnight. Be patient.
Related Posts and Bon Mots on Marketing Strategy
“How Content Heroes and Heroines are Made Not Born”
“What I Learned About Social Media from Andy Warhol”
“How to Generate More Revenue and Lower Costs with the Cloud”
“How to Win Your Darwinian Digital Battles”
“The Ten Second Race to Content Nirvana”
“Ten Creative Ways to Use Lists for Content Curation”
“How to Redefine Your Marketing Strategy in a Tech Drenched World”
Ten Creative Ways to use Lists to Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
