The Godiva Festival’s new website was launched last week as preparations for this year’s festival begin to gather speed.

The new site includes a wealth of web 2.0 technologies including streaming video, user galleries and blogs. Additional functionality including streaming audio, podcasts and a community forum will also be made available in the build up to the big day.

The festival itself takes place on the 3rd – 5th July at War Memorial Park and the site will provide visitors with key festival information via a comprehensive “Godiva Guide”, but will also act as a social hub for the Coventry community throughout the year.

Dave Wright, Marketing Executive at CV One, had this to say of our work:

“Working with HeadRed has been extremely rewarding. Not only were we impressed with the very high standard of their work, but also their commitment and dedication to the project.

Their customer service has been second to none, with all staff being extremely responsive to queries, dealing with them in a very polite and helpful manner. It has been a pleasure working with HeadRed, as they have clearly understood our needs, and exceeded our expectations on both the Godiva Festival and Create Your Coventry websites.
We certainly will consider them for future projects.“

Visit the new site at: http://www.godivafestival.co.uk/

Hailed as a potential rival to search giant Google, new computation knowledge engine “Wolfram Alpha” has gone live to the public.

The new system was invented by British-born physicist Stephen Wolfram and is aiming to change the way people use online data.
Instead of presenting a list of third party websites where one can find the data they require, the engine provides users with direct answers to queries by grabbing data from databases and consulting feeds of relevant information.

Wolfram Alpha can be asked known facts, such as the height of mountains, or be asked to generate new information such as up to date figures for a nation’s GDP.

Dr.Wolfram does not want the engine to be referred to as a direct competitor to Google. Instead, he describes it as a way for people to get more out of the information on the web.

“Our goal is to make expert knowledge accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime.”

Time will tell how influential Wolfram Alpha will become. Will it change the way we view the web? Or will it be yet another case of the emperor’s new clothes?

Try it for yourself at: http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Article source: BBC Online, 26/05/2009.

Twitter turned down an offer to be bought by Facebook just a few months ago for half a billion dollars, although that was based partially on overvalued Facebook stock. Google would be paying in cash and/or publicly valued stock, which is equivalent to cash. So whatever the final acquisition value might be, it can’t be compared apples-to-apples with the Facebook deal.

So why would Google want Twitter? Industry experts have been arguing for some time that Twitter’s real value is in search. It holds the keys to the best real time database and search engine on the Internet, and Google doesn’t even have a horse in the game.

If the rumours prove to be accurate, then it would be a brilliant deal for Google – the value of Twitter is only going to go up over time. And it will be Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone’s second sale to Google – they sold Blogger to them just five years ago. But there’s one big question – where’s Microsoft in all this? Letting Twitter go to Google only hurts them, badly, in the long term search game. This is an asset they need to be competing for aggressively if they have any hope of playing more than a bit part in the future battle for search supremacy.

The study showed that many small businesses are using the Internet to cut costs. Almost three quarters of respondents said they will use the web to boost their business profile, while 58% said they will use the Internet to break into new domestic and overseas markets. These findings have been supported by the statistic that over 6,000 small firms are joining micro-blogging website, Twitter, every day with the vast majority doing so to cut marketing costs and help further promote their business.

In other news, online sales were up by 13% in February when compared to the same month in 2008, according to the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index. It seems that more and more consumers are using the web to help their money go further.

The Conservative party yesterday implemented an audacious online ambush of Alistair Darling’s budget, with the aim of buying up Google keywords and directing internet users to its “live rebuttal” of the chancellor’s speech.

The Tories plan was to buy up budget-related Google keywords as the chancellor mentions them in his speech from 12.30pm, in an online advertising campaign the opposition dubbed a “live rebuttal” of the government’s economic plan for the coming year.

Their strategy was so that when web users entered budget-related keywords into Google’s search engine, they were instead directed towards online ads for the Conservatives. These ads in turn linked them to the Conservative party website and their response to Darling’s budget.

“We understand that it’s important for us to serve up our views in different formats, and Google is one of the first places people go to when trying to find information on a given subject,” - says the shadow culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt.

“Gordon Brown’s budgets are notorious for not revealing what is in the small print, so we will be using Google pay-per-click to help people see the real impact of the budget on their family finances. This is a perfect example of how political parties should be using the internet – to present their arguments to the public and help inform the debate.“

Article source: The Guardian Online, 22/04/2009.

Only a week after the UK version of Google’s Street View was launched there are now calls to close the service down from disgruntled members of the public.

In news released today a formal complaint regarding Street View has been sent to the Information Commissioner (ICO), which cites more than 200 reports of persons identifiable via the service.

After its much-vaunted release last week the street-mapping facility has come under heavy criticism from Privacy International. Indeed, it has been forced to pull a raft of images after receiving complaints from the public.

In the days that followed its launch the furore over the new system failed to dissipate and this formal lobby marks a major stumbling block in what has been a multi-million dollar project for Google.

The official line from Google’s spokespeople is that anybody who is unhappy with their data being captured can “opt out” from the system, although they are refusing calls to pull the system altogether.

Expect this one to rumble on for some time, but in the privacy vs technology debate the outcome of this case could prove a defining moment moving forward.

Over a million people have now voted against recent changes to social networking site, Facebook.

The changes, which have come into effect in the last few weeks, put more emphasis on status updates, relegating photos and videos to the background. Many believe the changes have come about due to the massive rise in popularity for rival site, Twitter.

However, 94% of users have voted against the new format in a recent poll with many asking the question that if it ain’t broke – why fix it?
Naturally Facebook have defended the changes claiming that the new homepage is “one step in the continued evolution of the site” and saying they take their users’ feedback very seriously.

Whether or not these results will be enough to reverse the changes is another matter. Despite their dominance of the social networking market with 175 million users worldwide it seems that the emergence of Twitter has unsettled the once unchallenged giant.

2009 promises to be an interesting year in the battle for social networking supremacy.

Read the full story at BBC Online (22/03/2009)

Predicting the next big online success isn’t always straightforward. True, some are easier to spot than others – back in August last year we reported on new micro-blogging concept Twitter, which has since gone from strength to strength.

However, knowing which horse to back isn’t always as obvious, which is where new investment company, YouNoodle, comes in.

YouNoodle uses a scoring system that plans to turn the business of investment into more of a science. Their software measures the “buzz” surrounding a company via blogs and media reports along with a variety of factors including website traffic. The scoring tool covers nearly 30,000 start-ups, ranging from biotechnology to gaming software.

So, if you want some advice on where to put your money why not check out YouNoodle?

Read the full story here (source: BBC Technology, 20/02/2009)

Well, since then it seems that Twitter has gone from strength to strength. The company have just recently turned down a half billion dollar acquisition offer from Facebook and are now looking at dipping back into the venture capital market.

They’ve signed a term sheet with at least one venture fund to raise a new round at a $250 million valuation. Whilst it is unclear how much they’re raising it is widely thought to be more than the $20 million in capital they’ve taken in over two previous rounds.

Twitter’s stock has increased further in the wake of new celebrity interest. British institution, Stephen Fry, chatted to reinstated BBC host Jonathan Ross about Twitter on his prime time Friday night show last week.

With luminaries and celebrities across the globe increasingly using Twitter to engage with their audience, it would seem that the sky’s the limit for this company that blossomed from a small San Fransisco R&D project.

You can follow the adventures of HeadRed through my own garbled tweets at http://twitter.com/adrianbevan

Wednesday 21st January 2009 marked a significant day in the history of the United States. It was the day Barack Obama became the first ever black US President as he was inaugurated in front of thousands of onlookers at Washington DC’s National Mall.

Whilst his election came as no surprise to many of us what was particularly interesting of his campaign was how he embraced the Internet and specifically Web 2.0.

Hope and Change
Unlike John McCain, Obama’s campaign made full use of the Internet to build his brand, deliver his message and build relationships with his voters and the wider world. With his team of experienced, innovative and progressive marketers he launched and executed what was to be a highly successful Internet marketing campaign.

Obama used a message of “Hope and Change” as the core of his campaign. This message was distributed across his entire Internet presence and formed the cornerstone of his web strategy. Furthermore, not only did Obama have a message of hope and change, but he positioned himself as the one to provide hope and deliver change. He branded himself as the agent for change and his message supported his brand.

Obama 2.0
Obama fully embraced the Internet and the power of Web 2.0. A large part of his Internet strategy focused on using social networks to communicate, engage and build relationships with people.

Obama had a presence on all of the top social networking sites including Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Eventful, and YouTube. He also participated on some niche social networking sites like BlackPlanet, Faithbase, MiGente, AsianAve, and MyBatanga. Not only that, but Obama also created his own social networking site to converse with and empower supporters.

The key to Obama’s online success was that he didn’t just have a presence on these social networking sites, but he actively participated in these online communities. He accepted friends, befriended others, added favorites, uploaded videos, and posted messages.

The Obama campaign also posted ads on Facebook, uploaded PDFs to Scribd, and shared photos on Flickr. They embraced all that Web 2.0 could offer their campaign.

The 44th President
New technology is shrinking the world we live in and Obama’s success can show us just how much of a difference utilising these technologies can make. Whilst his election can be attributed to many factors, Obama’s US Presidential Campaign leveraged the Internet, Web 2.0, and social networks to deliver his message, expose his brand, and drive traffic to his offers.

Entrepreneurs and Internet Marketers alike could learn a lot from his strategy.