Usually when I don’t like something I try to give constructive feedback. But in this case there’s just to much of a history involved. About 9 years ago I tried to pitch ideas on Saab. Partly because I really wanted to work with a car brand and partly because they were Swedes. Already back then were the account managed by Lowe Brindfors. I thought Lowe did a shitty job then and obviously they do a shitty job now. Will they never learn? (That goes for both SAAB and Lowe)

Today, as was writing a blog post about integrated communication (soon to be published) I decided to do a quick video analysis of the current SAAB presence online. And let me tell you…it sucks big time. Sorry for the shitty English. But it serves the purpose.

I don’t get it. Aren’t car brands supposed to senior managers employeed that knows their shit? These guys sell products that costs a fortune and they can’t even product a simple site that will convert people into buyers. It scares me.

The first thought that comes to mind is that the marketing department don’t know what they’re doing to the brand, and that’s of course true, but then I think about it a little bit more. This is not a marketing department problem. This is a management problem.

Jan Åke Jonsson and the rest of you ‘silverbacks’ way up in the hierarchy! SAAB is not an industrial company – it’s a B2C product oriented and brand driven car company backed by great technology but emotions and brand comes first. And Jan, don’t come telling me this is a thing for the marketing department. Branding and marketing should be your, the management group and the board of directors first priority. It’s what your future is all about!

So. Jan Åke and the rest of you managers at SAAB.
You’ve sold SAAB to another company outside Sweden, but the a large majority of the cars are still being built in Sweden and lots of peoples incomes rely on you and your management team taking the right decisions. In the long run even I will be affected if you close down. And trust me, if you don’t stop acting like fools when it comes to branding issues (cause personally I think there are more problems than the site) you’ll close down anytime soon. It’s time to stop loving your history and focus on the future!

About two years ago I frantically started writing on this blog post. Then the sheer length of it got the best of me and since then it’s been stuck in my unpublished library. Now I thought it’s time to give birth to this baby even though most of it was written about two years ago, before Facebook got big, the iPad and more.

When you read it – remember I pushed publish to share the love, not the excellent writing.

This post covers how you start and run a company practically for free.

The post will guide you all the way from day one until you’re up and running and need to consider things like sales, advertising, process support, crm, intranets, extranets etc etc.

I spend about 1-2 hours a day reading about communication, advertising, social media and innovations through my Netvibes account. What’s truly amazing is the fact that almost every day a new service is launched somewhere in the world (mostly in the US) that replaces the old way to advertise, communicate with clients, run projects, process customer data, run your IT systems, keep track of your finances etc etc. And what’s even more amazing is that all these new services are practically always available free of charge or at least only for a small fee.

So I thought why not spread this knowledge to my blog readers and especially you out there who are running a company or thinking of starting one. Here are some ideas on how to think when setting up a future brand.

So, here we go – How to run your small business without loosing your pants (or the money in your pants that is)

The development within the ‘so-called’ web 2.0 services has now gone so far so it’s possible to run your company practically without any in-house IT systems. Even a larger company could without problems move everything they do online at practically no costs at all.

When you sum it all up it’s time for companies to reevaluate how to do business. Social networking and long tail services are taking over.

So, what if you were to run a company today? What’s the formula? How can you run a business without paying a dime for technology and getting social attention at the same time. Once you got that business idea of yours ready to go. Then it’s time to tell the world. And don’t worry, if you haven’t got one, there’s even resources online that give away business ideas for free.

0.9 Before you start

First thing. In terms of costs, there are two things you should prioritize over everything else and that is: 1. Broadband – get the fastest connection possible. And make sure it’s down and upstream. 2. Get a really good computer. Choose a Mac. Not because I’m against PC but because it’ll support your creativity and once it’s up and running, you’ll never have to restart it again. It just keeps running and running.

A good friend of mine told me “We’re changing our tag line. But in order to know which one to use we’re putting out Google Adwords campaigns for 10 of our finalists. The one that generates the most traffic, that will be our choice”

1. Business plan, marketing plan and a key note presentation.

Whatever you do. Make sure you put it on paper. Putting things on paper forces you to choose carefully. Put whatever you’ve written into the hands of friends and you’ll get great feedback on what you need to fine tune. Do you need inspiration? Visit slideshare.net or Scribd and then get going.

2. Register a domain.

IMPORTANT: Register your domain with the company where you intend to host your website.

IMPORTANT 2: Unless your fancy with code – don’t register with a hosting company that doesn’t have support for auto installers. I personally recommend Bluehost.com. But if you’re a Swede you might wanna check Binero out.

There are of course some other alterantives like Active 24, Bust A Name, Miss Domain and SEDO.

3. Forget expensive software.

Don’t buy software. They’re expensive. You’ll have to buy updates once a year. Instead use online softwares. Most companies need Email, Word, Excel and Powerpoint. For that I recommend Google Apps instead. Some companies may need graphical design tools. Well, then use Gimp or something like Splashup for graphical design.

Inside Google Apps you’ll provide your employees with Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites. On top of that Google Apps is integrated with Salesforce, something I’ll explain more about under CRM.

Gmail — Offer custom email addresses to your organization with up to 25 gigabytes of storage for each account, search tools to help people find information fast, plus instant messaging and calendar tools built right into the email interface.

Google Talk — Your users can call or send instant messages to their contacts for free — anytime, anywhere in the world. File sharing and voicemail is included, too.

Google Calendar — Your users can organize their schedules and share events, meetings and entire calendars with others. Your organization can also publish calendars and events on the web.

Google Docs — Co-workers can create documents, spreadsheets and presentations and share online files without having to keep track of multiple versions of the same attachment. And it’s all compatible with Microsoft Word.

Splashup is a powerful editing tool and photo manager. With all the features professionals use and novices want, it’s easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once. Splashup runs in all browsers, integrates seamlessly with top photosharing sites like Flickr, Picasa & Facebook, and even has its own file format so you can save your work in progress.

Forget expensive phonecalls.
When it comes to calling, you should of course make sure you have a regular phone number. But when you do, consider IP telephony. Messenger, Rebtel & Skype

Forget conference call systems
Campfirenow and since some time back Skype allows you to hook up 5 screens at the same time.

Forget finance systems
Blinksale, Freshbooks and Billings.

Many of the other sites I’ve written about can be used dependably of where in the world your company resides. But when it comes to financial applications, you really have to find and use a local products.

Blinksale is perfect for anyone in the US who needs to invoice clients for services or products sold. Basically, if you need to send invoices, Blinksale can work for you. What’s really cool also is the fact that if you’re using some of the other online products like Basecamp and Highrise (that I’m writing about below) the Blinksale also makes it easy to import and invoice your clients and customers without having to re-enter their data into Blinksale. Finally, is also has a fine API if you wanna integrate it into your own cloud.

4. Intranet and internal processes

Once your team (or you) are set to go, you may wanna set up the processes that you need in order to run your business. Let’s start with the internal stuff.

Intranet (or actually Intranet 2.0)
Let’s make sure you get an intranet that is alive and kicking. There are a couple of ways you can solve this by putting it all online. Here are three suggestions:

Use a wiki. Wetpaint is an online community where anyone can start their own wiki. Choose from a set of templates and you’re set to go. Of course you can make sure all your content is private. Another alternative is PBWIKI, used by Citigroup and at&t among others.

Use Facebook. Ah, I know what you’re saying. Stupid. But actually not. Facebook with all it’s application makes up the perfect intranet. Just make sure all your employees are set up with a Facebook account and then start a group. Make sure the invites are personal and the group private. Then your’re off. Chattsupport, documents, videos, forums, etc etc etc. Perfect.

Use your own Facebook – Ning. This place was founded in October 2004 to give everyone the opportunity to create their own social networks for absolutely anything. Today Ning powers the largest number of social networks on the Internet.

Finally. My own favorite. Use Yammer. Yammer is like Facebook and Twitter combined and it’s set up in seconds. This is the shit if you wanna create an Intranet 2.0 for your company.

Now when you’re done with the internal stuff, obviously you can use all those three examples to create an extranet towards your best B2B clients.

5. Project management.

Forget Microsoft Project Manager. What you need is a great group collaboration software. And Basecamp is exactly that. As they say themselves: “Basecamp takes a fresh, novel approach to project collaboration. Projects don’t fail from a lack of charts, graphs, stats, or reports, they fail from a lack of clear communication. Basecamp solves this problem by providing tools tailored to improve the communication between people working together on a project.” I’ve been using Basecamp in tons of projects and it’s a killer. Not for free, but not far from it.

6. Sale support & CRM

Many companies spend millions on getting their CRM and customer support systems in place. Stupid.

First. Let’s get a little bit 2008 when it comes to customer support. Don’t believe your IT department when they wanna throw a heavyweight system that makes your budgets explode. Instead, use something that is free, something that positions your company as new thinkers and at the same time caring. Use Get Satisfaction for example. Get Satisfaction is a direct connection between people and companies that fosters problem-solving, promotes sharing, and builds up relationships. Thousands of companies use this neutral space to support customers, exchange ideas, and get feedback about their products and services. Get Satisfaction is open, transparent, and FREE. Head in there and register your company. Who knows, maybe it’s even up there and people care about it…or the other way around. In that case, make sure you claim it fast and start supporting your customers.

What about CRM? Yep – no need to buy expensive software here either. Two places where you can get exactly what you need: Highrise and Salesforce. These two online CRM platforms provide Easy-to-use Web-based CRM solutions for sales, service, marketing, and call center operations that streamlines customer relationship management and boosts customer satisfaction. Salesforce is probably my number one recommendation as it is seamlessly integrated with Google Apps. On top of that they’ve already created a slick integration into the iPhone that let’s your salesforce access critical customer information instantly through the iPhone’s familiar touch screen format.

Lately however I’ve gotten more and more fond of Bantam Live that combines the power of Yammer with a typical CRM thinking.

7. Your website

So, the time has come to become public and show your ideas online. If you’ve done what I told you too and gotten yourselves a domain at Bluehost.com. Then it’s easy as one, two, three. There is a beautiful thing called Simple Scripts. It provides you with auto installations of the most common open source content management systems out there. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Geeklog, Mambo, Xoops…the list goes on.

My recommendation is WordPress. WordPress is originally a blog system that lately is being used more and more as a web content management system. Developers all over the world are adding drag and drop plugins that enable most things you would want on your website. And when it comes to designs, you have about 5000 free templates to choose from. The last couple of month more advanced templates such as Thesis and stuff Woothemes and has been released for a very small price. By using Bluehost auto installer you don’t have to care for anything in terms of configuring databases and emails on forms etc. It just works. All for the price of $6.95 a month…including hosting. Practically FREE.

If you feel you wanna get moving with WordPress. Here’s a guide I wrote some time ago on how to create a WordPress blog that rocks the world.

Once you’re done with the website and your posts and articles pile up, it’s time to burn your feed. Make sure you register your blog/site with Feedburner.

Why a Burned feed is better than a not-burned feed?

• Publicize your content and make it easy for people to subscribe.
• Optimize distribution so that your content is properly formatted for all of the major directories and can be consumed by subscribers wherever they are.
• It allows you to analyze your traffic to learn how many subscribers you have, where they’re coming from and what they like best.

If you’re planning to sell your products online.
Not to worry. Let PayPal handle the payments. If you are planning to sell tons of products, then let Amazon Webstore handle the whole thing. Cost? $59.99 per month. Ok, maybe not free, but a whole lot cheaper than a multimillion dollar system. And I assure you, the Amazon Webstore will work like a charm. If you’re Swedish, then head over to ebutik.se and you’ll be up and running before you know it. Costs for ebutiken? Practically the same as Amazon Webstore.

Oh, and if you’ve set your site up in WordPress you could actually build your site on Thematic and then use the child theme Simple Cart powered by the great plugin WP E-commerce and start selling your gadgets for even less.

You might wanna consider checking who’s the visitor to your site.
Then time has come for another FREE product. Google Analytics. Log on, register and implement on your WordPress driven site. Google Analytics will ask you to submit a site map that makes it easier for them to crawl your site, but not to worry, there is a FREE plugin for that as well. An alternative to Google Analytics is MINT. However, that requires a little bit of technical skills, but it might be worth it.

If you’re this far into the post and have gotten your website up and running. Make sure also to check out Google Webmaster Tools. There’s a lot of goodies there.

8. Company videos and photos?

Maybe you should pay for an expensive solution to make sure there’s now glitches when your clients visits your website. NOOO, open a Flickr account, place all your videos and photography there. This way you’ll make sure you pay nothing for a fantastic streaming and storing solution. Something you normally pay at least a couple of hundred thousand dollars for normally. Cost? $24.95 a year! And oh, I forgot. If you got a hacker in your organization, you can easily use the Flickr API and create your own video and photo applications. Finally the beauty of this is that you can use a simple drag’N’drop plugin to showcase both the photos and the videos on your site and at the same time everyone who think your company is the shit, they can send these things further. By using Flickr you also make sure you have a presence in more than one place. Social networking! Obviously you can also do exactly the same with your videos on YouTube, but maybe it’s easier to place them all in one place.

There is however a new Danish player in town since a couple of weeks back. They’re called 23Video. Their business idea is pretty simple. Build your own video portal, host as many videos as you want and pay no more than 675$ a month. Splendid idea for you who wanna host your own stuff.

Whatever you do, you should make sure that you spread those videos outside your own or the network you choosed. An excellent product that I’ve written about long time ago and was reminded about in the comment field of this post is TubeMogul. TubeMogul lets you spread your content over tons of video sites and you’ll get a great overview of how it’s performing.

Let’s move on. It’s time to put that business presentation of yours into action.

9. Creating banners and TV commercials?

Of course you should run banners and TV commercials. But SEO, affiliate programs and Adwords is the shit.

Hiring an agency will of course give you the best results. But, let’s say you’ve just started, since you already spent about $10 on Flickr your pockets are empty. No worries. Now that Google features TV ads on their websites it’s easy to head over to Jivox or Spotmixer and start putting that wonderful piece of your together. Once you have created that wonder ful piece of your’s head over to Videoegg or Google TV ads and start spreading the words.

When it comes to creating your own campaigns and banners you should also consider placing competitions on sites like 99 designs. You’ll get great stuff while paying close to nothing. Look, Robyn does it.

10. Search Engine Marketing – SEO/SEM

Oh, this is probably the most complex thing you can put your mind to. First of all, before you even start you gotta get a shitload of traffic in order to experiment with it. And once you got that valuable traffic you are probably to afraid to try and you won’t make use of your SEO knowledge anyway. But luckily there’s people who can point you in the right direction – Aaron Wall, the founder of SEO Book.com. Of all the books and all the sites I’ve read on SEO marketing when I started writing this post, SEO Book.com was one of the best. Some time ago though Google published their version of a SEO book, and that one is of course free so I’d recommend you try that one first.

Apart from reading up on SEO at home I do recommend you to start following Nikke Lindqvist, Jesper Åström and Simon Sundén. Three friends of mine who shares their ideas through their blogs. Nikke and Simon in Swedish and Jesper in English.

11. Marketing

When I say marketing most people start thinking about sales people, advertising, events and getting articles about your product into newspapers and TV channel. Well, you can do without all of these channels. Think about it – ever seen an ad that sells Google?

What you’ve gotta do is get into Google Adwords, learn about affiliate marketing and get down with Facebook ads. There are of course tons of services out there. But if you become good at these three you’re almost there. If you then on top learn to master social media you’ll end up in those traditional newspapers and TV channels sooner or later anyway. Once you’ve got a database with clients you should get going with MyEmma or the better one – MailChimp. Two great email marketing services that will kick but.

12. You know what….I don’t have any energy left to finalize this post.

I just thought it was important to get it out there. So in order for you to get hold of nr 12 you’ve gotta learn how to do it by yourselves

Go get em!

ps. Feel free to share more ideas and tricks in the comments of this post!

Think social media and conversational marketing might be the next train to heaven for your brand but don’t know where to board? Well, here’s three social media marketing models that will make sure you’ll find your station.

If you wanna get moving into the social country of love where conversation rules you’ve gotta get one thing straight. Valuable content is king. Buying a loudspeaker and start tweeting wont get you anywhere. Swedish brands like Comhem and Boxer have effectively proven that just twittering the 140 sign language doesn’t earn you any followers. Every social network will provide you with it’s own possibilities and traps. A well executed strategy is a must or you’ll end up in a minefield.

Here are 3 models by Johan Ronnestam that will guide your brand towards a successful social media strategy.

3 Models That Will Guide You Into The Social Media Landscape

1. The Social Staircase

   The Social Staircase is a model that focus on the overall process. It’s the stuff that pays for your ticket to love.

2. The Social Tool Matrix

   Now you know what kind of presence your business needs. Now it’s time to map the tools to make sure you know what to keep your mouth shut, when to speak and when to listen.

3. The Social Viral Spiral

   This is about speed. Spread that love I’m talking about below. But make sure you do it with finesse and timing. Create a couple of Social Viral Spirals and you’re ready to make out!

How your brand makes good use these three models is entirely up to you. When I’m working with brands within this area I off course spend quite a lot of energy and time on getting it right. But hopefully it will be of value for you without my help. Here we go:

1. Get your strategy right with the Social Staircase

The Social Staircase consists out of 4 steps that guides your brand into the conversation landscape called Social Media

I have outlined 4 steps that make up the Social Staircase. These are the ones I’d suggest you’d use too when you wanna move into the social room.

• Step 1 -Strategy
  Establish a strategy that supports your business. Whatever you do in life you should have a strategy in place that supports your business. In other words this means you should strive to achieve your vision, your goals and making sure you don’t loose money while doing it. This should be your approach to social media initiatives too.You should of course be prepared to risk money since it’s still an early adoption initiative. But still you should strive to measure results and revenues. Sooner or later your boss will ask you what he’s paying for and then that answer should be well prepared.

• Step 2 – Presence
  The mother of all conversions is content. Think about it – when you’re at a party, how long do you think your conversation would last if you didn’t provide any true value. Bullshit or merely staying quiet wont earn you any new friends. Of course some people you’ve known since way back will stay put but sooner or later even them will stop inviting you to their party.

  I haven’t bothered to create any models for this step. It’s a simple rule. Think about you and your business. What value can you provide people with and in what format? Blogs, Video, Photos, Podcasts, Livestreams, Advisory, Games, Knowledge etc. Based on your strategy in step 1 – what kind of value can you provide your target group and potential fans with? Cause that should always be your goal – turning people into fans! If you’ve done your homework this should work like a charm.

  If you’re looking for inspirations. Head over to the Social Media Wiki.

• Step 3 – Tools
  Ok. So know you know that kind of presence you’re after. Then it’s time to gear up. Facebook, Twitter, Slideshare, WordPress, LinkedIn, Scribd, Google Buzz might be the obvious ones. But dig deeper – there’s something for everyone out there and you should consider where your content will do the boogaloo at it’s best!Tools defined? Then move on and figure out when to run with it and when to slow down. Move over to the conversation step, create a set of social viral spirals and get down to business.

• Step 4 – Conversation
  Listen. Talk back. Listen. Talk back. Listen. Talk…This is what a conversation is all about. We could actually call it interactivity. You create valuable content and then once you let it out in the open – listen and learn how to fine tune those spirals of yours.

  (I’ve posted stuff before on the listening part and so have others – that’s of course crucial in this phase. Since neither me or them have posted a tip on Silverbakk then here it is.)
  

  You should avoid creating to many spirals. They will only confuse you. But on the other hand if you got to few you might not hit the right spots. After all, segmentation has been around for ages and it’s not for the fun of it. Segmenting who and how to target your audience is essential.

Let’s move on and a have a look at the Social Tool Matrix.

2. What content goes where – Outline your tactical tools with a Social Tool Matrix

It’s all about structure, planning, organization and control (once you have something to say)

Don’t pick any tool out there for the fun of it and definitely don’t let one person in your organization handle them all. Every tool has it’s own advantages and should be treated that way.

Once you’ve passed the strategy and presence step in the Social Staircase it’s time to map which tools can do the work for you. It’s now time to create a Social Tool Matrix.

The Social Tool Matrix basically makes sure you and your organization analyze and choose a set of social tools that can deliver on strategy. While you’re entering stuff into the matrix you’ll be forced to answer the following questions:

• What tools shall we use to fulfill our strategy?
  Choose your tools carefully. Just because your competitor is riding the wave over at Facebook doesn’t mean you should. Look back at the social staircase. What strategy and what presence should you support?
• Why should we use this tool?
  Publish, interact, spread, buzz, images, video etc. Remember that sometimes you’ll be better off with more than one tool doing the same thing. Video for example. YouTube, Viddler and Vimeo are all about video but have different advantages.
• Who should be responsible for the updates?
  Don’t drop the entire load on top of a webmaster. Make sure your social marketing is spread out horizontally on your organization. The right person for the job huh?
• What’s the naming / domain conventions?
  I use ‘ronnestam’ everywhere I can. What’s your strategy? Think before you act and then keep track of it!
• When can we say we’re successful?
  This is a hard one. People that comment your blog posts. Diggs. Linkups. Facebook recommendations. Re-tweets. SEO effects. Actual sales. You pick your own index but make sure to pick a couple. Both qualitative and quantitative cause they’re both important.
• Can we measure the return of investment (ROI)
  If success was hard this is pretty darn impossible when it comes to social media. Some of you might say it’s not. But isolation of social media effects are hard. One of the few examples I know of is Dells Twitter outlet and that’s pretty unique.
• What social spiral shall we use (this will be defined in the next stage)
  You’re not here yet. But once you get to the next stage of this post. That’s when you decide on the social spirals. Every time you activate a tool. Remember what and what good it does. The Social Spirals will lead the way!
• And whatever more you think should go into the matrix.
  Last but not least. This post is inspirational – not an actual guide. You have to do your homework and your business might need a lot more inside the matrix than my actual example. Get it right and you shall succeed!

Once you got the social matrix mapped you and everyone in your organization is prepared to start the conversation it’s time for one last thing – the Social Viral Spirals.

3. Get viral with the Social Viral Spiral

Choose your tools wisely and start a conversation

Many of you have of course seen Brian Solis Social Conversation Prism.I love it too but it’s more of a wonderful image that maps all the possibilities with the social web than help for brands who are trying to figure out what to do and where to do it. Of course you can do everything and in some cases maybe you should. But what you really need once you’ve got an idea what you can do is a tactical tool.

I’ve created the The Social Viral Spiral for exactly that purpose. Use Brian Solis Prism and then translate the tools and services you need and create your own set of Social Flowers depending on what you are trying to achieve.

What the Social Spiral does is basically define where, what, how and when you should seed that content of yours into the social web. Triggering conversations online must start somewhere and then continue over a series of social networks and tools depending on what your purpose is. Marketing campaigns are in need of a lightning speed spread. Corporate information might not need that spread at all but still needs to go social due to SEO reasons for example.

A brand or company can have as many spirals as they want but I personally think you should aim for 3 or 4 depending on what kind of product and services your brand produce. The purpose of these spirals differ depending on a set of factors and you will probably have to adjust them over time.

Once you’ve got an idea on what kind of content and activities should be matched with a certain spiral you will surely have better chances in succeeding and most importantly you will have moved the knowledge about conversation from a specific employee to your organization!

Things that affect the intensity/speed of your spirals.

• Type of content
• Timezones
• Time of actual publishing
• Internet behavioral patterns
• Where did you act the last time
• Number of followers on Twitter
• Number of friends in social networks
• Amount of social networks where you intend to interact
• How unique is the content you intend to promote
• What brand do you represent?
• Purpose – marketing, operations, news, etc…

Got that wired? Good. Then it’s all about creating that content and spin the wheel.

Right now you might have tons of open questions about this post OR it seems perfectly clear. I really don’t care which since I’ve gotta get this thing published before it consumes me.

Best of luck!

A couple of hours ago the New York Times launched an update of the skimmer interface I wrote about earlier this year. It’s an alternative way to browser their online magazine. They call it The Times Skimmer. The new interface let’s you navigate between different sections of their paper by only using the arrows on your keyboard. The GUI also lets you switch fast between articles and once you’re done reading one you can easily move on to the next.

Times Skimmer features the following seven display options:

• Stories displayed in a grid
• Content displayed based on editorial ranked feeds
• Headlines displayed in a list
• Content presented in the classic typeface Helvetica
• Content displayed against a black background
• Headlines and brief summaries displayed in a wrap-around format
• Headlines, bylines and brief summaries displayed in a design similar to word magnets for refrigerators

After I’ve been spending a couple of minutes with this updated interface I’m struck by what now seems obvious. Isn’t this interface perfectly adapted to be read of a 16:9 touch screen. Of course it resizes as you scale your browser, but that only means it will support a rotation.

Is The New York Times preparing for an Apple Tablet or maybe a reading device of their own?

Every time Apple has launched a new gadget they’ve made sure they gained some support by a selection of leading brands already tuned into their new shit. Well, in that case – could the Skimmer interface from The Times be exactly such a partner. If so…will we finally see an Apple Tablet in the near future?

Well. I’m sure about one thing. I’ll get my hands on one asap!

Update!

It seems more mags than The Times are preparing. I spotted this one this morning yesterday on YouTube. It’s Sports Illustrated’s version of a tablet prepared digital mag.

United States Postal Service has launched this augmented reality application that allows their customers to find out if a certain shipment fits the box and thereby also finding out what it actually costs.

It’s smart, it’s branding and it’s innovation!

SwissMiss got me hooked up.

Yesterday ReadWriteWeb reported on a new article skimmer interface over at New York Times. It’s a stunning new way to let you quick read the headlines of all the latest news from the Sunday Times. The simplicity of this thing is striking yet genius.

And as often before it turns out that content, usability and simplicity beats smart, strange and unique solutions online. Just have a look at Craiglists, the mother of simplicity.

Navigating on a website is merely a road to our goal ›› the content. By creating an interface that consist of a number of boxes that contain a small image, headline and an intro text, this new prototype makes it very easy for me to come back and browse the latest news in all categories. It doesn’t take me more than a couple of minutes until I’ve browsed the first page and another 16 sections.

The navigational experience is very close to my personal favorite RSS tool Netvibes. I bring all the feeds I want to read into my Netvibes account and then it doesn’t take me long to browse through the latest news online.

One of Johan Ronnestams Netvibes tabs.

The great benefits with these kind of solution is the way everything is equally weighed in terms of size, colors and content. The eye races over the screen and we’re not far from the offline morning paper behavior when we skimmer the newspaper before actually reading it. This was of course something that the Times wanted to replicate. Once they launch this simple interface as an iPhone widget then I’ll be the first to start using it. Until then I’ll continue to read my favorite Times sections through Netvibes, basically the same except for that Netvibes is actually better since you can read the entire article without leaving the interface.

What should you do? Judge for yourselves.

One of the worlds most awarded websites has been redesigned. And the way Absolut.com is heading doesn’t come as a surprise. The new site has been give an slick, well designed user and SEO friendly interface. Many parts of the site has been moved from a flash based interface to a classical CSS based interface. Everything is done with the touch of Absolut.

This is definitely a first switch from Flash based sites of many to come. I’ve personally been part of building lots of flash sites through the years. But the possibilities to create rich user and SEO friendly interfaces with CSS gives us no reason anymore to use Flash for entire sites.

Also the fact that marketing departments around the world have undoubtedly noticed that their visitors leave after seeing that first loader will lead to change.

All in all I like the new Absolut.com better than the old. But there’s a few things I would have done differently:

The flash intro
Get rid of it. It takes time to load. We’ve seen it before and it doesn’t ad anything. There must be something different you could do with it?

Products
Why do you still separate the product experience from the brand campaigns. Integrate this better. The shouldn’t be any need for me to visit both products and a campaign site anymore. Mash it up! Also, why can’t you let people rate, comment, trackback, tag etc. Afraid of getting bad publicity?

YouTube integration?
The site has taken a step from interactivity to passivity. Why aren’t there any videos? Absolut could easily create the worlds most visited YouTube channel that could be reflected on Absolut.com. I think the time is over for sites that look to draw all traffic to their own site. You’ve gotta distribute your content in all different channels in different ways. And Absolute should be ahead of their game here.

Where’s the conversation?
Ok, we’re aloud to comment on blog posts etc. But where’s the stuff that generate conversation. Google Friend Connect, Facebook Connect, social sharing, commenting, reviews, ratings, user generated drink recipes, ideas etc. 

The blog?
Jacob Nielsen once said “People spend most time on other sites”.

Why is the new blog some sort of innovated blog that actually works bad compared to established blog standards. I think we could have expected more from Absolut. And why not base it on WordPress? This way it would load faster, it would give you access to hundreds of thousands features created by the open source community. It would give you credibility too.

Innovation?
Last but not least. I definitely think that this new site is nice. But it doesn’t ad anything in my book. Absolute has taken a step 5 years back from an innovation stand point of view. This is an ordinary site with some flash content and beautifully designed pages. I sure hope we don’t end up seeing this site staying on as a launch platform for new flash based campaigns but instead see more true but user friendly innovations that reach the broader audience with the Absolute brand message still intact.

So, conclusion

Original conclusion
This new site cannot be a strategy coming from online savvy people cause the tactical execution is great. Someone has identified that Absolut.com as it worked before didn’t deliver on usability and SEO and therefor needed to be changed. The project must then have been controlled by people within Absolut’s organisation who doesn’t understand how to create the next generation web presence.

Alternative conclusion
I’m totally wrong and this is the first to come of many releases that will put Absolut.com on the map again. But then I also expect a switch to open source, mash ups, conversation, openness etc.

In order words. You sure as hell wanna make sure that brand of yours is found among the top searches on Google. SEO is more important than ever. Building websites that get listed and linked up is key.

So, if you wanna get our management team on board, do the following 3 steps:

1. Print this beauty that I found on Anton’s blog.
2. Fold it into a B52 bomber.
3. Throw it straight into their face.

As I’m sitting listening to people on stage talking about viral communication a great post flips by in my RSS reader. The post talks about 18 rules that the best web developers follow. The list is a great compilation of what’s important. Still I’d like to ad two rules. 

Hey, before you read – feel free to comment and ad your own ones. Let’s write a new bible on web development.

19. Implement atomization where ever possible.
Make sure that whenever you post things on your website, make sure it spreads out through RSS feeds, ping mashups, post information to the cloud and onto social networks. And also make use of potential ways to snap content from the web that is related to your business. Yahoo Pipes or Tarpipe can make the difference for you.

20. Don’t underestimate copy. 
Involve a copywriter early in the process. Copy can make the difference between a site that delivers on target or not.

Here’s the original list. And make sure you head over to the original post as they have elaborated on each and every bullet.

1. Don’t push information on your visitors.
2. Poor advertising is evil.
3. Be a source of information.
4. Develop your own style.
5. Obey the standards.
6. Be clear.
7. Use Internet Explorer as a baseline.
8. Content is king.
9. Web-crawlers and SEO should be an afterthought.
10. Share content naturally, don’t spam.
11. Answer your e-mails immediately.
12. Engage in Social Media.
13. Make connections, and nurture relationships.
14. Take advantage of the “worldwide” web.
15. Build sites for “users”, not the site “owner”.
16. Always keep learning.
17. Find inspirational resources for creativity.
18. Beautify the Web.

Microsoft Research is obviosly a pretty cool playground. At first glance you might think this is another video of Microsoft Surface, but it’s not. This new 3D monitor/touch screen is called Second Light and it at least makes my brain go wild. Imagine what you could do with this thing if you had one to play around with. Who knows, maybe we’ll be walking around with balls in our pants instead of mobile computers. (I know…cheesy but I couldn’t resist)

Landed here via the New Scientist.

Aha. So you’re still at home crying about that car you drove of the bridge while texting ‘Look, I can drive without holding the steering wheel’. Well, not to worry. Vlingo has got just the thing for you. These guys have launched an application that allows mobile phone users to speak and look-up information such as local restaurant listings to film schedules.

Personally however I do wonder why people don’t call instead. Talking brings you closer. Text does not. Anyway, here it is.

Caught this one on GigaOm after reading a post on Frogdesign, an old favorite of mine. By the way – check out Frogdesigns competence sharing place called Design Mind. A great read!

If you got an iPhone. If you every now and then visit Ronnestam.com. Then you’re in for a new experience optimized for your phone. Thanks to the excellent plugin WPTouch I’ve made sure the site loads faster, is easier to use and renders better on iPhone.

Now you know.