New Top Level Domains Are Available: Be A Savvy Marketer

/in , /by

Top level domains – you know them without really being able to define them – they are the .com, .org, .net, .edu, .gov, and even .mil. Top level domains also include the country domains – you’ll see something.ca, for example, and know that’s a domain related to Canada. .jp is for Japan and so on.

Now there are a whole host of new top level domains available for purchase and the benefits for marketing and differentiating yourself are compelling.

What Are the New Top Level Domains?

There are about 1300 new top level domains and they are being released to the general public slowly. There are 111 that are now available for purchase. The new top level domains cover a wide range of topics. Here are a few examples:

  • .academy
  • .agency
  • .bargains
  • .bid
  • .bike
  • .build
  • .builders
  • .catering
  • .cleaning
  • .club
  • .construction
  • .democrat
  • .education
  • .expert
  • .guru
  • .marketing

Top level domains like .law, .lawyer, and .attorney will be available for pre-registration soon. What should a savvy marketer do to take advantage of these new domains?

1. Innovate Your Brand

I’m sure we can all agree that your domain name is important for the branding of your company. After all, you would expect to find Connect4 Consulting at www.Connect4Consulting.com,  right? And the same is likely true for your business domain.

But what if the game changed so that your business domain could be more aligned with your business? We could be Connect4.marketing or Connect4.consultant. Own a car dealership? How about www.BethesdaFord.cars? Have a law firm? How about www.washingtondc.law or www.personalinjury.law? Are you a politician? How about www.joesmith.democrat or www.joesmith.gop?

These changes and more are all coming in 2014. Savvy marketers need to get in front of this new domain landscape and line up to protect their brands (or even consider re-branding).

2. Protect Your Brand

If you have a domain that is your company name or a domain that reflects your branding, it’s time to protect variations of that brand that are becoming available.

For example, Connect4 Consulting only works with companies in the US and Canada, so we’d probably be okay with a foreign entity owning <a “href=”http://www.connect4consulting.asia/”>www.connect4consulting.asia. But we definitely would not like another agency to grab www.connect4consulting.marketing.

3. Get Up For The Sunrise

As each new top level domain becomes available, there’s a 60 day “sunrise” period for trademark holders to purchase their domains. For example, this will allow Hertz to scoop up www.hertz.cars and Amazon to get www.Amazon.book. Trademark holders still have to purchase the domains but they get first pick.

To view the list of all the new TLDs, take a look at Name.com’s TLD Watchlist Here you can see all the new TLDs and also mark the ones you’re interested in so that you can be notified when they become available. Your domain registrar may offer a similar service. As these new domains become available, you can purchase them for prices similar to those for your existing domains. Tip: Go to Name.com’s TLD Watchlist and see what TLDs are of interest to you. Then add these names to your Watchlist (right on the same page).

4. New Top Level Domains and SEO

According to Google’s Matt Cutts, the new top level domains won’t have an SEO advantage over existing domains. What will matter, however is the memory of the end user and your branding. Which is better Ford.com or Ford.cars? Hilton.com or Hilton.hotels? Today it’s easy to say that .com is better for brand recall, but over time I think we’ll see a shift as brands use the top level domains as part of their overall branding strategy.

The Bottom Line on New Top Level Domains

Our suggestion is that you register new top level domains that match your business objectives or that you want to protect, either because of your own trademarks or for future use.

Amazon Fire Phone: Should You Buy One?

/in /by

Amazon recently released the Amazon Fire Phone – their first foray into the smartphone market. The phone is built around the Amazon Prime experience and runs the same heavily modified version of Google Android found on the Kindle Fire tablet. This means that it will have access to the 240,000+ apps in the Amazon app store, but not every app available in the Google Play app store (roughly five times the size of the Amazon app store).

What’s missing? Most notably, Snapchat and YouTube.

Should You Buy the Amazon Fire Phone?

Amazon Fire PhoneThe Fire Phone is a market leader in a single category – mobile shopping at Amazon. That’s thanks to the “Firefly” feature, which is essentially an everything scanner. Once you load the Firefly app, you point the phone at just about any product, a DVD, a bottle of water, or any number of 70 million other products – and the Fire Phone will display it on Amazon.

Firefly also recognizes over 240,000 movies and TV episodes, and 160 live TV channels. Firefly uses X-Ray, powered by IMDb, to show information on actors, plot details, and related content—add titles to your Watchlist or download to watch later.

The Fire Phone also features a 13 MP camera that can shoot 1080P video.

The big bonus is a free year of Amazon Prime (normally $99) with every phone purchase. If you’re a Prime customer already, Amazon will add 12 months to your existing Prime subscription. Amazon is also including 1,000 Amazon Coins (a $10 value) for apps, games and in-app purchases with the phone. Finally, for photo fanatics, Amazon is offering free unlimited Cloud Drive storage for pictures you take with the Fire Phone.

How Much Does the Amazon Fire Phone Cost?

The Fire Phone will be an AT&T exclusive (at least to start), and is now available for pre-order (to launch on July 25). $200 for the 32GB version and $300 for the 64GB model along with the standard two-year contract.

How to create a podcast

/in , /by

The Internet has leveled the playing field and removed many barriers to entry in a wide variety of industries. Creating your own broadcast for radio used to be a highly complex and expensive undertaking. Now anyone with an internet connection and some inexpensive equipment can produce a podcast and make it available online.

Why Podcast?

People podcast for many different reasons. Most people podcast because they have a love (or a hate) for something that they want to express. Here are a few:

  1. knowledge about technology
  2. love for a certain tv show or topic
  3. marketing  – a band could do a podcast to get more listeners for their music or a technology company could do a podcast to advertise itself
  4. radio stations use podcasting as an alternative way to distribute their content

What Topic Should My Podcast Be About?

Podcast.com lists podcasts by category. Once you begin to explore the world of podcasts you’ll discover very quickly that there are niche categories you never thought existed. The most important thing is to pick something that you are passionate about.

What Kind of Equipment Do I Need to Create a Podcast?

When it comes to choosing the equipment for recording a podcast, there’s no right or wrong. You can spend as little or as much as you want on equipment, with the primary differences showing up in sound or video quality and ease of editing. There are some key pieces of equipment you’ll absolutely need to create a podcast, however.

  1. Microphone  – There is a huge variation in the price and quality of microphones. While it’s possible to record a podcast with the small plastic microphone that probably came with your computer, the sound quality will not be very good. If you’re serious about your podcast, you will want a durable, dynamic microphone. If you plan to conduct interviews with two or more people using one microphone, an omnidirectional mic is key. The Shure SM-58 is a very good all-purpose microphone that won’t eat your entire podcasting budget. If you plan to record in the field or record musical performances, you will have different mic requirements.
  2. Recorder/mixer – You’ll also need a recorder or mixer to mix multiple inputs, if you have them, and actually record the podcast. There are hundreds of mixers available, but smaller units with around four inputs will suit all but the most ambitious podcasts. Some mixers have outputs designed for sending data to a computer via USB or Firewire. The recording can also be sent to a separate recording device — either a tape or a hard disk recorder — then transferred to the computer later. These are especially helpful for recording away from home. Some mixers come with built-in recorders. This area is where you will find the most variation between podcasts, because there are several possible mixer/recorder/computer input combinations.
  3. Sound Card – Simple podcasts can be recorded directly into the computer, but if you plan to have multiple people on your podcast, you might need a more robust soundcard that can handle multiple inputs (more than one microphone)
  4. Telephone Connections – Many podcasts follow a talk-show format with people calling in and asking questions. This type of podcast needs a way for multiple people on multiple phone lines to hear each other and a way to record the conversation. One solution is to use a phone service capable of running a conference call, then run a tap from the phone to the recording device.
  5. Audio Software – Software is a key element of recording a podcast, and it serves multiple functions. Good audio software allows you to set the proper recording levels, record the podcast and save it in a useful audio format. You can also edit the podcast using software. Very few podcasts are recorded live in one take and sent straight to the Web. We recommend that you visit iPodder.org. They review most of the podcasting software.

How Do I Broadcast My Podcast?

Once your podcast is mixed, recorded and edited, and you’re ready for the world to hear you, there’s one crucial step remaining: getting it out there so other people can listen to it. The podcast itself should be saved as an MP3 file. The higher the encoded bit rate, the higher the sound quality. A bit rate of 128 kbps is probably sufficient for a talk-show podcast, but podcasts featuring music will want bit rates of 192 kbps or better.

Then you have to upload the podcast to the internet. If you have your own website, you could upload the podcast to your website, but it’s important to remember that every time someone downloads your podcast they are using up bandwidth and you could easily exceed bandwidth limits by doing this.

One of the cool things about podcasting is that once someone subscribes to a podcast, they don’t have to continually check back to the podcast’s Web page to see if a new episode has been posted. Software known as a feed aggregator automatically downloads new episodes when they appear. This is done by creating an RSS feed for the podcast. The RSS feed is what people will click on to subscribe to your podcast.

There are many services that automate the process of creating RSS feeds. You simply plug in the link to the MP3 file, and the feed link is generated for you. Some services, such as LibSyn, even host the MP3 file and give you cool tools like an app creator so you can add a smartphone app to your podcast (for a monthly fee – Libsyn starts at $5/month. $20/month gets you the app package as well). Feedburner is another service that offers additional features to podcasters. Many blogging Web sites have integrated RSS feed plug-ins as well. Apple’s suite of productivity software, iLife, includes the programs GarageBand and iWeb, with podcast creation and feed creation integrated with iTunes.

Related Podcasting Information & Resources

Top Five Affordable NAS Servers

/in , , , /by

Home Backup Made Easy

The importance of backing up your data is relatively mainstream these days. People either do it or don’t do it, but it’s common knowledge that there are two distinct ways to back up your data. You can do it online, using a service like Carbonite, or you can buy an external hard drive and set up a program to run regular back-ups. Online backup services are great and very reliable, but what do you do when you have hundreds of GBs to back up? Online backup is still a viable option, but it’s expensive and depending on your broadband connection, the initial backup could take months. Also, if you have multiple computers, you will quickly reach the limits of online backup.

What Is a NAS Server?

A NAS server is similar to an external hard drive but instead of connecting to a computer using a peripheral connection (USB, FireWire, Thunderbolt, etc.), it connects to your router (or switch) using a network cable and makes the storage space available to every computer on the network. Apart from acting as a backup destination (what I’m focusing on in this blog post), a NAS server can also work as a streaming server, file sharing server, and even a personal cloud server, as well as many other functions you can’t find in external hard drives.

Top Five Affordable NAS Servers

1. Synology Disk Station DS214se

Synologysynology ds214se photo is the most well-known vendor of NAS servers. Thanks to the DiskStation Manger (DSM) operating system, Synology NAS servers are easily the best on the market in terms of performance, functionality, and reliability. The Synology DS214se is the latest in this crowd. It runs DSM 5.0, and is designed as a budget NAS server for a small home. The server can house two internal hard drives to offer up to 4TB of protected storage space (in RAID 1) and it supports Time Machine natively. It also comes with Data Replicator software for backing up your Windows computer. At the current price of just $160 (diskless) or $340 (4TB included), the Synology DS214se is a really good bargain.

2. WD My Cloud EX2

The My Cloud EX2 is a dual-bay NAS server from WD and is one of the most affordable among dual-bay servers on the market costing just $390 for 4TB (6TB and 8TB servers also exist). While it doesn’t offer as many features as the Synology above, the server is very easy to use and will make a great backup server for both Windows and Macs. It also has a very user-friendly personal cloud features for you to access and share data on the go.

3. WD My Cloud

The WD My Cloud is very similar to the WD My Cloud EX2 with one exception – it’s a single bay NAS server. This means that it only houses one data drive and there’s no way to protect this data if the lone drive fails. For this reason, I would only recommend this as a backup drive and not a drive that holds a single copy of your data. This is a significant drawback, made up slightly be a very competitive price. The WD My Cloud currently costs just $150 for 2TB of space.

4. Seagate Central

The Seagate Central is also a single bay NAS server. The server supports Time Machine backup natively and comes with backup software for Windows. It’s not as easy to use or as fast as any of the above servers but it’s definitely the most affordable with a current price of just less than $130 for 2TB.

5. Apple Airport Time Capsule

Obviously this is not an option for PC users, but the Time Capsule is a great backup server. As a storage device, it can’t do much else other than act as the backup destination for Time Machine and share files between multiple computers, so its utility is extremely limited. The one unique thing the Airport Time Capsule includes is a wifi router, so if you only have apple devices and you need a wifi router with 2TB backup capability, the Airport Time Capsule is a good deal at $280.

You can now ask Google to remove links about you.

/in /by

Right To Be Forgotten

Thanks to an EU ruling on the “right to be forgotten”, you can now ask Google to pretend the item doesn’t exist.

Google has created an online form you can use to ask for links to personal data or posts about you to be removed from Google search results. This new form is in response to last week’s EU ruling on your “right to be forgotten“. Essentially the EU ruled that you have a right to ask Google to stop linking to anything that’s “inadequate, irrelevant, or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed.”

To ask for links to be removed, you have to supply the URL and explain how the links in question relate to you. To finalize a request, you have to give your name, contact email address, and a photo ID.

The form also allows you to make a request on behalf of someone else, allowing spouses, lawyers and other associates to ask for links about someone else to be removed.

If Google approves your request and removes the links in question, they will disappear from results in Google sites across the EU. However, in a statement to CNET, Google’s lawyers argue that applying the EU ruling to US publications in Google’s US search results would be “absurd.”

For more information, read: