Delicious 2.0 finally released after the looong wait!

Several BIG changes I noted:

Domain name changed to delicious.com – Personally, I like del.icio.us more, and I thought that was a smart idea.

It is Quicker – The single-page-loading-time has been reduced dramatically.

I haven’t found any news about their new infrastructure yet, but it is definitely better than before.

It is sexier – The new design is clean and shiny. But, the font size is a bit small and may not be classified as easy-to-read.

It has a Search – Wow! I like the search facility, which is quick and accurate. I think they are using a caching system rather than real-time database queries, otherwise it can’t be that quick.

Not using Content Delivery Network (CDN) ? – On Yahoo’s Best Practices for Speeding Up your Web Site, they suggest to use CDN to reduce response times for across multiple, geographically dispersed servers. But, Delicious 2.0 is not using that technique.

Jason

Cuil is so brave that they labeled themselves as Google-killer.

I like it and I think their launch was very successful in terms of broadcasting their messages, which have been posting onto many media giants, including PC World, TechCrunch, Time, Yahoo!, CNET, Mashable etc.

Unfortunately, cuil went offline just few hours after the over-heated launch. But, that is always a good problem to have. (I hope we could have that problem when bizroof was launched. )

I have to be honest that scalability and relevance are the 2 main problems for cuil at the moment. However, they have successfully created a BIG index, which I believe is the hardest part for searching engines.

Some suggestions

It is not an easy job at all to startup brand new search engines and compete with Google, Yahoo and MSN, even with $33M funding.

So…… maybe one of the followings could help……

1. Open Source – Get some help from all the developers on the planet. (Firefox is a good example in the web browsers industry)
2. Human Editing – Go a little bit further and keep in mind that you guys have got a fabulous indexing system. Wikipedia and DMOZ are successful, aren’t they?

Good luck, Cuil, and we will give you a hand if you need.

Have you noticed there were some changes in the Google PageRank toolbar during this weekend (July 25th and 26th 2008)? I have seen some changes of many sites PR, especially for new sites. It has been 150 days since the last Toolbar PR export (February 26th 2008), but I am not sure weather it is a major update or just a minor tweak this time. 

Jason

WHAT’S YOUR WEAKNESSES, SMART SALESPEOPLE?

Good salespeople always know what, how, when to talk to their customers. Wow, that must take ages to learn! How the hell could they remember all the previous conversations with their customers?

Hmm… that is not that difficult… I can simply take notes about phone calls and have a look at them just before I pick up the phone again. Ain’t I smart?

But what if you are not the only person talk to the customer? What if your colleague take a day off and the boss want you to do his work on that day?

Hmm… I don’t know then, what do you reckon?

You need a database to store the contacts and conversations collected by all the people in your office. You will soon discover the magic of that database which tells you everything you need to become a smart salespeople.

GOOD PRODUCT + EFFECTIVE MARKETING + ? =  REPEAT SALES

We have a brilliant product. We invest heavily on marketing. BUT, the sales report makes me cry. I need advice.

If you think your potential customers believe what you tell them, you are in danger. They do digest your message, BUT they prefer to trust what their friends tell them. Therefore, you need to focus on your existed customer and MAKE THEM HAPPY, and they will definitely pass the “happy” experience to their friends.

How could I make them happy?

Simple, you just do whatever you promised, even tiny stuff. The straightforward approach is to populate the “promises” onto an easy-to-use calendar which makes you confident to say “I’ve done it all!”

WHAT DOES BIZROOF PROMISE?

We try the best to provide a best way to store, organize and share information.

We try the best to make you succeed.

Well, we launched Bizroof CRM 3 days ago, and here is all the stats so far! We don’t hide; we don’t lie; and we want to share.

Report One – Usage

1. 754 registered users
2. 43 pending invitations sent by all existed users
3. 16,870 contacts (people + organizations)
4. 7,506 events
5. 1.87 GB files
6. 108,212 notes
7. 93,002 tags

Report Two – Hits & Page views

1. 8.1 GB Bandwidth (Total Traffic)
2. 232,849 Hits
3. 13.89 Hits/Visit

Report Three – Web Server Requests

Report Four – Client Browsers

1. FF3.0 – 4.4%
2. FF2.0 – 31.3%
3. FF1.5 – 0.2%
4. IE8.0 – 0.01%
5. IE7.0 – 27.2%
6. IE6.0 – 26.1%
7. Safari – 4%

I’m excited to announce that Bizroof CRM, our brand new web application is live!

We are proud of the contact management system we’ve built, which gives small and medium sized companies a simple and powerful way to store, organize and share the useful information collected from interactions with customer.

I would like to express my thanks to the Bizroof Crew and all of you who constantly support us!

We see our business from customer’s perspective and build easy-to-use web based applications for you!

Jason

According to Apple, MobileMe is launching on July 9th Between 6pm-12am PT, just few hours away now. Apple describes MobileMe as a suite of web-based applications (Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Gallery, and iDisk) and Push sync services.

As I said in Is MobileMe Innovative?, Apple is approaching their massive consumer base with the message of Easy-to-use, elegant interface and desktop look-n-feel. As an application deverloper, I am interested in MobileMe’s perfermance behind the SproutCore javascript platform, and I am going to do some simple tests, including:

1. I will test the speed of the iDisk with some large files. (Reason: To see if it gives me the desktop look and feel)
2. I will test the mail with all basic features and then compare with Gmail’s conversation-style. (Reason: MobileMe and Gmail target the same market)
3. I will run MobileMe on IE6 (Reason: According to W3C, 26.5% browsers are IE6, which is not on the supported browsers list of MobileMe)
4. I will go throught the javascript to do a brief test about security.

P.S. MobileMe lives at me.com

1. Google Trends – search patterns and trends.
2. xinureturns – search engines, social bookmarking results aggregation.
3. quantcast – Internet ratings
4. alexa – traffic and changes
5. analytics – keywords / traffic source / visitors and more
6. compete – advertisers like reports from compete
7. search-directory – categories search tool

I’d like to say a massive thank you to the guys developing these fantastic search engine optimization tools, which make our life much easier.

Matt

Online advertising is all about conveying a simple idea to your potential customers as quick as you can. Time is precious in the age of information overload. So, you have to get your concise message to the targeted audience in an effective way, which doesn’t make them think and eager to hear more.

Lessons learned from my experience:

1. Understand the habits of your targeted customers. For example, what websites do they visit on a regular basis? What are their common interests? What do they say about your competitors?
2. Tell your customers how you’re going to solve their problems. Make sure people understand what values they are expected to get, no matter how you’re trying to reach them.
3. The ads / messages should be driven by keywords for SEO sake. i.e. 5% to 8% of the content should be the keywords themself.
4. Tell the bloggers why their readers should be interested in your topic.

The application is made with PHP and javascript, and we use a MySQL database. Amazon’s S3 is used for storage of files upload by users. Prototype and script.aculo.us provides us with easy-to-use and sexy user interface. We use Zend Framework APIs to support web services (such as Google, Flickr, Yahoo and Amazon). Meanwhile, we support microformat and RSS.

Wordpress helps us to build our fantastic Bizroof Blog which is powered by K2 theme, and iconshock provides all the icons we need.