Wow, I Got Smashed!

Yes, we can...
Here's one from the "Stick to it, you can do it" Category... Way back in March of this year Smashing Mag started featuring stunning desktop wallpaper created by amazing artists and designers working on the web. I was hooked on Smashing since they rolled in the Fall of '06, and they really crank-out great articles, resources, how-to's, fonts, tools and all sorts of stuff that really does "make your life easier" if you work on the web (or if you geek-out just for fun, huh?).

In March I was so inspired by the amazing artwork that I took on a personal challenge to try and see if I could get Smashed too at some point — and I set out to try and make some decent desktop wallpapers whenever I had time. Finally, in November I submitted a wallpaper just to see if my stuff would rank, but that set wasn't chosen (the calendar was too difficult to see). No biggie I figured, and I churned-out another set for December just for chuckles, submitted them and went about my boring routine just as I always do and thought nothing of it...

Feelin' Pretty Good Now
I returned from a rare, and invigorating brief traveling jaunt and checked my email and deleted my typical SPAM messages (sorry: it's actually large enough, I don't need a mortgage or a mail-order bride, and I don't need an expensive watch, etc.) and then did my typical web surfing and feed reading. Then, I remembered I had submitted my wallpaper, and went to see if the fine folks at Smashing had posted for December with my fingers crossed and there I was, SLAM I got Smashed and it was a great feeling. Nice.

One Ant and One Giant Rubber Tree
Here's what made the grade, and I called it "Violet Night" because it sorta sounded good and seemed to make sense at the time. I dressed it up in some fancy phrases to make it seem like I actually had a concept when in fact I was really just messing around with Photoshop.

I think I can, I think I can!
I think I'll try to do something again next month since it's really kinda fun and I like rubbing pixels with some of the best on the web — makes me feel like I am somebody, really. Maybe I'll actually get some traffic and a few ad clicks on this stupid blog after all these years. That's another long-winded long-term goal, but I've stopped holding my breath waiting for a check from Google.

Check out all the fantastic stuff they've got at Smashing Magazine, and add them to your feeds — heck, why not try and submit your stuff? It's good for you and 100% natural without all the weird side effects, fast talk and fine print...
:-D

Search better than Google?

If you're looking for something cool on the internet these days, you'll probably use a search engine. You've also probably used all the big well-known search engines out there, but now there's another player in the space, cuil (pronounced "cool"). Developed by former Google engineers, and self described as "the world's biggest search engine", cuil boasts an index that spans over 120 Billion pages (Search 121,617,892,992 web pages).

Cuil's results are neatly presented in columns, very relevant to your search terms, and based on actual content not popularity. At the moment, there are no ads to get in your way either. If you value your privacy, cuil believes "that analyzing the Web rather than our users is a more useful approach" so they "don’t collect data about you and your habits" which is very refreshing.

Its features include relevant drill-down suggestions, roll-over definitions for additional information, tabbed choices, and logical search suggestions.

Its name is an old Irish word for knowledge, and if you still haven't found what you're looking for — then give cuil a try »

First Impressions: AdWords is...

We had an interesting challenge at work recently. We were asked to run a campaign using Google AdWords and generate as much traffic, and conversions as we could in two weeks. Most of this stuff was new to me, and there is definitely an art, and a lot of science to it. My first impression of Google AdWords is very good -- it's powerful, easy to use (after you get used to some of it's features), fun and cool like most Google Apps.

I took a fairly unscientific approach, and really just tried to absorb and learn what I could. My budget was next to nothing, and I wanted to see what I could do on a really tight budget. I got a reasonable amount of traffic but unfortunately, I don't think I got any product conversions (purchases). My completely unscientific approach and limited budget was a bit of a let-down -- and I really didn't spend as much time as I wanted on it. We were asked to spend about an hour a day on "the challenge" in between our regular stuff.

There's a tremendous amount of really good help and documentation, and a lot of time can be spent just reading -- which was one of my main goals -- there's a lot more to it than just knowing what the acronyms mean. It's probably a good idea to plan for that before starting a campaign.

I think the trick is to come up with a plan of action, and metrics to help you evaluate your success/failure and progress. An obviously critical aspect is to get the right keywords and creative that makes sense for the keyword sets you want or need to use. Then bid-up, burn-in, track, and quickly peel out the stuff that isn't working.

I ran two pretty basic campaigns:

1) Starter Campaign - Budget Optimizer enabled [ $20.00 / 30 days ]

2) Campaign #2 - Price focussed adverts [ $5.00 / day ]

Here are some numbers...

Clicks   Impr.   CTR    Avg. CPC   Cost
   11   24,627   0.04%   $0.24    $2.63
   63   99,620   0.06%   $0.79   $49.96
   74  124,247   0.05%   $0.71   $52.59 (Totals)

Writing really good creative is imperative. Ad position is also another key factor in terms of getting good results. In terms of generating traffic, you can judge for yourself. I was also able to get some purely organic traffic as well, but I don't have those numbers handy. That said, I was able to easily get more than double that traffic on my blog without spending a penny -- so I'm definitely still a strong believer in organic traffic generation.

I didn't get to spend much time on this area but the coolest feature for me was Google Analytics. Lots of data to look at -- graphs, maps, charts, and numbers galore -- and it helps you figure out what's going on and think about ways to handle your campaign.

Granted, there are puny numbers and it feels a little "Mickey Mouse" to me, but it was really interesting and I learned a bunch. I'm not sure of exactly how well others did, but there were a good handful of conversion purchases -- just not from my campaigns. I think my lack of conversions (and the same for other participants) is partly due to the nature of the product, and I think we could probably make some improvements to the product creation and the check-out process as well.

Ultimately, two conversions would have paid for my entire campaign, but as I mentioned before it was my first foray into AdWords and SEM, and there's definitely a LOT to it. I've had an AdSense account for a while (obviously), and I had an AdSense but never really used it until now, so I probably could have done the reading without spending anything but I think you really learn a lot more just by messing around with it.

I learned a lot for $52.59, why not give it a try? Hint: There's an AdWords link conveniently placed in the column on the right »

Simplicity, complexity, John Maeda & design.

Take a look and listen to this TED Talk by John Maeda. In it, he discusses daily life, technology, and design -- all mixed together with topical points of complexity and simplicity from the perspective of design and how it relates to daily life. His talk is engaging, and the examples are funny and well-worth the watch.

His new book Laws of Simplicity presents ten rules and three keys to working and living simply -- in the talk he brings it down to just one simple way to be...

Elegant Simplicity.




> Watch this talk on ted.com

Very Cool Site of the Day

THE AD GENERATOR

The ad generator is a generative artwork that explores how advertising uses and manipulates language. Words and semantic structures from real corporate slogans are remixed and randomized to generate invented slogans. These slogans are then paired with related images from Flickr, thereby generating fake advertisements on the fly. By remixing corporate slogans, I intend to show how the language of advertising is both deeply meaningful, in that it represents real cultural values and desires, and yet utterly meaningless in that these ideas have no relationship to the products being sold. In using the Flickr images, the piece explores the relationship between language and image, and how meaning is constructed by the juxtaposition of the two.

The ad generator was created by Alexis Lloyd as a component of an MFA thesis project in the Design and Technology department at Parsons The New School for Design.