The Bivings group is jumping on the ActionScript 3.0 bandwagon, and our clients are coming along for the ride, apparently it's a fast one…

This language is pretty new to everyone and we want to be a pioneer in creating more dynamic and smoother apps for our clients using this awesome new language. ActionScript lends us the power to create animated and interactive content programatically, thus reducing the footprint of our projects and resulting in more stable and reliable applications.

There are many ways to do the same things in flash. Part of being creative in flash is not only about how you visually design the elements in your application, but how efficient you are, in other words, how small you can make the file size. Following is an example of what I am talking about. The file on the left was done using ActionScript and the file on the right was faked using motion tweens, As you can see the left one much smaller in file size, it is also smoother and more responsive. The ActionScript version is 4kb and the tween version is 12kb… that's 3x smaller, cool.

Also, this little fact stood out the most in a sea of specs and Adobe documentation. "ActionScript 3.0 code can execute up to ten times faster than legacy ActionScript code!" And faster is better when it comes to loading!

Regular readers of this blog know that we are part of the web development team working on the Fred Thompson website, www.imwithfred.com. On Monday afternoon, the team launched a new version of the site. Frankly, I’m too tired to write up a good entry summarizing all the new features so I’m going to cheat and just link out:

(1) The Fred File blog has a good breakdown of what has been added.

(2) Patrick Bell over at TechRepublican makes note of my favorite part of the new site, the Volunteer HQ section that features a log of all activities a volunteer completes. He calls this section “much more advanced than anything I think I’ve seen by the announced candidates.” I’ll take it.

(3) Micah Sifry over at TechPresident sums up the site’s new features pretty well:

I’m With Fred.com” Version 2.0 is up, and the 2.0 is justified. Not only is the redesigned site a hub for news of Fred Thompson’s potential presidential bid and his positions on the issues, the site offers new tools for organizing events in local communities, for creating and exporting contribution and communications widgets to other sites, for registering to vote, and for allowing members to track through their profile pages how well they are doing in recruiting supporters. It’s nicely done–a tribute no doubt to Michael Turk, who techPresident readers know has been agitating for this kind of GOP site for quite some time. One interesting wrinkle–you can’t view comments on the site’s blog without first becoming a “Friend of Fred.

Let me know what you think about the new site in the comments.

I'd like to take a few sentences here to point out something new going on over at Problogger.  Blogger Darren Rowse always has useful and interesting posts for people who take blogging seriously.  This month he's focusing on offering up some of his best blogging tips for his readers.  August is "31 Days to Building a Better Blog ", and there have been some good tips so far with many more to come, I'm sure.

Another great part about this project is that by rounding up reader posts on the same subject, Darren has in effect created a central location for some of the Web's best pointers on creating a successful blog.  Here are three posts I think are especially helpful:

• Top 7 Blogging Mistakes to Avoid 
• 10 Things to do When You  Have Nothing Else to Blog About
• Got Blog? Grow it with some Special Spice

When I blog, I usually focus on a couple of items:

• Link, link link!  It always helps to link to other bloggers' posts (this is a no-brainer).
• Catchy titles.  Not only can the title of your post make your post more searchable, but it will probably grab the attention of at least a couple of people.
• Stay topical.  Timely writing about events in the news or other media can help you get some extra traffic. I'm not saying you should blog about Lindsay Lohan every day, but discussing some relevant and popular issues or stories doesn't hurt.

Anyway, if you're finding yourself in a blogging rut, the current Problogger project is a great place for some inspiration and advice. 

At first it was the Red Coats, then The Beatles, and now BBC employees are the British Invasion.  This time they're invading one of America's most popular web sites.

As of this posting, the British Broadcasting Corporation facebook network has 14,726 members.  For an imperfect comparison's sake, I've checked the CNN network, and it only has a 311 members while the Turner Broadcasting (CNN's group in the AOL TimeWarner empire) network has 1,843 members.

Back on June 6th, Richard Sambrook, the social media savvy and friendly Director of BBC Global News, wrote on his personal blog SacredFacts that "[t]here are over 10,000 members of the BBC group (for which you have to have a bbc email) alone. That's about half the entire organsiation."  The BBC has invaded facebook!

Today I had lunch with a friend who works for the organization and asked him if there is some directive from management to join.  He said that there wasn't and reckons membership went viral as people kept inviting their colleagues to join.  However, people have joined; how many actively use it is another question.

For awhile some regular facebook denizens created groups for specific programs, but now a few BBC employees are creating groups around programs and other features so that they can use the site for more than personal reasons.  For instance, the domestic BBC Two news magazine show Newsnight and the BBC Mundo ¿Hablas español? blog created official groups to connect with their audiences; the prior has asked its group members for story ideas with an invitation in the title, "Get Yourself on Newsnight!"  Further, the new iPlayer — which is in beta — now has an application on the social networking site that allows users to rate and share their favorite BBC programs.

While there is no directive to join or use the site, my friend also told me that he plans to use it to promote his program soon.  Hopefully, the site will help the show connect with its audience better and perhaps use its audience to promote it to their friends.

Of course, only programs and BBC features that lend themselves well to social media — based upon format and audience demographics – will benefit from facebook, but it seems that many Beeb employees are keen to try.

At the very least, as Sambrook wrote in his facebook post, "it's fun. If you havn't [sic] jumped yet with facebook, twitter or any of the others, come on in, the water's fine."

Let's stop and think for a moment.  When was the last time you heard a song on the radio and thought to yourself, "I have just got to get to the store and buy this CD!"?  I honestly cannot remember the last time this happened to me.  Now, it's much more likely for me to browse the net, see a song on a friend's Facebook or MySpace profile, and head over to iTunes to download a digital copy of that song.  Times have changed, haven't they?

According to a recent study by Entertainment Media Research, this pattern of browsing and buying digital music is becoming more and more commonplace.  This company argues that social networks are in essence changing the way people browse and purchase music.

In June, Entertainment Media Research (from now on, EMR), conducted an online survey of 1,700 people in the UK to judge how music consumers use social networks to obtain music.  Here are some important points from the research:

(more…)

Greg Schneiders, a founding partner at the Prime Group, emailed in the following guest post. - Todd

Among the many, many reasons for the less-than-effective response of traditional media to the new challenges and competition they face, one of the most annoying is their inability to peel their eyes away from their collective navel. Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal provides the latest and, perhaps, most egregious example.

Judging by Wednesday’s edition of the print WSJ, one would have to assume that nothing else happened in the world in the previous twenty-four hours since the paper contained what seemed like wall-to-wall coverage of the deal and its seismic consequences. Even more coverage was available on the WSJ website which labeled the deal “historic.” Historic?

The New York Times was not to be outdone in the arrogance department however and editorialized that, “at its most ambitious, Mr. Murdoch’s vision for Dow Jones would establish The Journal as the rival to The Times in setting the daily news agenda of the country” (if we do say so ourselves). Are they in a time warp? It should be fairly obvious that Murdoch has no interest in politicizing The Journal because:

1. He’s a political ideologue, true, but first and foremost he’s a businessman;
2. The Journal is only worth $5B (if at all) because of its brand, not its assets or earning power;
3. You don’t trash the brand you just paid dearly for.
4. There is no market for a politicized WSJ – he’d lose the current business market because they wouldn’t trust it and he’s not going to pick up the Fox News or tabloid market;
5. Given his strategy of marrying The Journal with a Fox finance channel, all the above applies doubly.

Seems to me all the folks at the WSJ, the Times and elsewhere in the old media world would do better to learn from Murdoch’s boldness and vision and stop wringing their hands, watching their navels, and pining for days gone by.

Ben Hammersley's coverage of the recent elections in Turkey isn't the only time that BBC News is using social media to report a story. 

Currently, José Baig and Carlos Ceresole are traveling across the southern USA without uttering a word in English.  ¿Hablas español? is their project to see what's it like to use only Spanish in the country.  Beyond a BBC hosted blog, they're using other social media tools like facebook, flickr, and Skype to connect with their audience.  So far, 325 people have joined their facebook group.

These projects should prove interesting.  Using these social media forums probably doesn't cost the BBC more than it is already spending to gather information.  While money isn't the issue — especially since the Beeb is generously funded in part by the British people, distributing content via social media is risky for a mainstream news organization, but the BBC has the enough good reputation to experiment. 

I’ve been reading with fascination a series of articles that have appeared lately that question the value of maintaining a presence in Second Life. To make a long story short, a year or so ago, when the Second Life hype was deafening, companies appeared in mass to construct their own virtual presences as a way to market their products. Now a year later, companies are rethinking their presences in Second Life for the simple reason that no one comes to their online stores.

NBA commissioner David Stern had this to say about his league’s presence, which went live in May of 2007:

I think we’ve had 1,200 visitors. People tell us that’s very, very good. But I can’t say we have very precise expectations. We just want to be there.

To put that figure in perspective, our modest blog here sometimes attracts 1,200 visitors in a given day. But I think Stern’s quote is instructive beyond the number he reveals. Like with so many companies/politicians/organizations, he has launched a social media campaign that has no real purpose.

To me there seem to be distinct phases to the life cycle of the hype around these social platforms as marketing tool.

(Phase 1) The real first movers start experimenting with marketing in places like YouTube, MySpace or Second Life. The Wall Street Journal or Business Week writes a story touting what they are doing.

(Phase 2) The “me too” crowd dives in head first in the hopes of getting some earned media and branding themselves as a company/organization that “gets it”. The campaigns are often sloppy and the commitment is shallow. Most of the campaigns end in failure.

(Phase 3) The hype is over. The “me too” crowd has moved on to the next thing and success/failure of campaigns are judged by the actual results that they produce as opposed to the hype they generate.

I think Second Life is in Phase 3. MySpace probably is too. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are in the middle of Phase 2.

So what’s my point? I don’t really have a big one. I’ve just seen some pretty awful videos on YouTube lately with no rationale beyond “me too-ism.” Before diving in head first, I’d encourage folks to truly think through what they are hoping to achieve and not do something just for the sake of doing it.

Not every company needs a Second Life island and not every politician needs a presence on 24 social networks.

While I am no search engine optimization guru, I know enough to see many SEO goofs that outsiders and neophytes make.  One of these mistakes is dismissing the importance of site visitor feedback and web analytics.

If you want to drive traffic to a site, pay attention to those who already visit it.  Sure, it sounds simple enough, but the other day I was reminded of how many sites don't follow this advice.

I'll focus on keywords.

The other day I was writing some content and wanted to see what keywords sites about the same topic were using.  After doing some quick keyword research in a search engine provided tool, I checked the other sites, and they didn't use words that people readily used to find sites like them.  Ugh!

Keyword research is just one way to find out which words people actually use.  I used an external tool, but a web analytics program should also provide such data.  When listing referring sites, most programs (even free ones) will reveal the keywords someone used if the source is a search engine.

Of course, this is much easier typed than done, but it seems strange to me how often sites ignore data that reveals how site visitors actually find a site and what lingo they use to find it. 

Just because a restaurant reckons that people will search for "Amsterdam eatery" doesn't mean that is what potential patrons will use to search for it.  What if they use "Amsterdam diner" instead?  An organization's internal lingo likely does not match that of its target audience. 

Granted, site visitors use different terms, but usually there are a few words that a significant amount of visitors use.  Thus, a site should not just target one or two, but if it does, it better at least target jargon that members of its target audience do use.

It is important to note that in some cases a site might justifiably target less popular terms.  In sectors where the popular terms are very competitive, a site may not have the ability to rank well with the most popular search keywords.  However, a site may do well by targeting less popular terms if it can rank well under searches for them.  That's where harnessing the long tail of search can kick in.

I'm not saying that keyword strategy is easy, but virtually ignoring research and analytics that reveal what site visitors actually use is just plain dumb. 

After my experience the other day, it seems that there are still many people who ignore this piece of advice.