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InGameNow iPhone App Ready for Beta Testing!Today

We’ve been hard at work on the InGameNow iPhone Application and got great assistance from a collection of beta testers. We have just released the 99% complete first version of the app (a couple changes coming) and are ready for full beta testing. So if you are an avid sports fan and an iPhone user, please email me directly for beta access.

The application should be available in iTunes shortly (knock on wood).

Core components of the app:

- Live integration with InGameNow: seamless posting and pulling
- Automatic scores / posts updates
- Dashboard of games that are “InGameNow” (screen shot below)
- Full schedule and browse accessibility by league and team
- Ability to set and monitor favorite teams

Half of Social Media Campaigns Fail Because Half the Problem is Being SolvedOctober 6

Atop Techmeme is the CNET blog post “Analyst: Half of ’social media campaigns’ will flop”.

It’s a gloomy headline clearly written to grab the eye and drive traffic (it worked - after all, I found it on Techmeme); but despite the strong title, the article’s guts are actually quite insightful and on-point. The core arguments by Gartner analyst Adam Sarner is that half of social media campaigns fail because advertisers only deliver half of what needs to be delivered in social media campaigns:

- a medium to convey and promote your brand
- a medium for social interaction and engagement

I’ve written about the three elements of compelling, engaging widgets before - and it echoes this point:

1. Give Users a Reason to Come Back
2. Make it Customizable
3. Market Softly and Carefully

“(Businesses) will rush to the community and try to connect, but essentially they won’t have a mutual purpose, and they’ll fail,” Sarner said. By a “mutual purpose,” he means a way to serve both the company putting out the campaign and the audience interacting with it: finding that balance is not easy. The quirkiest and mo

I Love Google Chrome, But…October 3

You would think that Chrome wouldn’t return errors on Google properties… right? I get the following error when trying to access my Google AdSense account (which I find laughable):

This is probably not the site you are looking for!
You attempted to reach google.com, but instead you actually reached a server identifying itself as www.google.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration on the server or by something more serious. An attacker on your network could be trying to get you to visit a fake (and potentially harmful) version of google.com. You should not proceed.

Who Won the VP Debate? Ask GoogleOctober 3

America tuned into watch Sarah Palin debate Joe Biden… and now they are turning to Google to ask, “who won the vp debate?” According to Google Hot Trends - t’s the #1 search query on Google. The results, however, are far from satisfying and prove just how difficult indexing - and more importantly, ranking - fresh content from the blogoshpere and media is.

Proof: If you are asking who won the debate, the best results likely were published after the debate. Right? Well here’s a breakdown of the seven suggested sources:

- two articles published at 11am pst… long before the debate occurred
- two articles from big media companies (Forbes and iReport) that are asking for user commentary
- one AdSense affiliate reposting the top search queries
- two timely critiques of the actual debate: one from WSJ and one from RightPundits

Introducing New Blog Design… Thoughts?October 3

When I first started this blog, it was on a whim and I built it over a weekend on a hosted version of Wordpress. The theme I implemented and hacked-together worked well but didn’t scale well with increased amounts of content, advertising, etc. And while much of my readership is via RSS and email, I was bothered by the overflow that become my blog…. so I finally mustered up the time and courage to hack a redesign together over the past few nights.

So here it is: a new theme that is more of a “magazine” template. It is based on Arthemia and is very flexible / customizable. There several great features which aren’t turned on because I haven’t had the ambition or confidence to upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress (any help welcome!).

Lots of blogs are moving away from the old top-to-bottom styles and into more organized, magazine styles (see TechCrunch and Mashable’s new looks)… much of this is the ability to better scale, feature advertising / promotions and increase pageviews. As I test out the new theme, I will report on any changes and trends that occur, particularly within:

- pageviews
- navigation
- SEO
- eCPMs / engagement rates

I’d also love your thoughts - like it? Hate it? Improvements? Know CSS and want to help!?