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GoogleGoogleGoogleGoogle and Branding


08 Feb

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Posted in Rants, Raves, School | No Comments »

Tonights ranting is on: Trademark and branding

Over my winter session of classes, my professor introduced us to a website. It was more so to show us how social media and random websites can have such a larger following then even our local papers.  We compared our Stevens Point Journal, to GoogleGoogleGoogleGoogle.com

Alexa's Reach of Google*4 and UWSP

As you can see, GoogleGoogleGoogleGoogle has a higher daily reach then even UWSP, and even a lot more than the Stevens Point Journal.

GoogleGoogleGoogleGoogle’s idea was quite simple.  It was 4 iframes on the page each pointing to Google.  You could resize the windows; point them to other sites and a few other pretty cool tasks.  I made a comment to Professor Krause, about wondering how long it would take before Google complained about the use of their trademark.  The site clearly didn’t alter content or gain anything from the users, however because of the domain name, it does violate Google’s trademark claims. We were not sure how long it would be, but figured Google would likely find it soon enough.

Today during class, I went to GoogleGoogleGoogleGoogle to do some side-by-side searching, to find a note from the site’s author saying the site was going to be taken down because of a take down notice that they received from Google.

I am going to miss the site, because it did come to be pretty useful.  Trademarks and branding are important to a person and company.  From Google’s side, if they don’t protect their trademark, they risk losing it.

It brings me to a new point as well.  I’ve gone by the nickname Freekie for most of my “Online” life.  I’ve moved away from it slightly, using CoreyRants.com instead of my old Freekie.net.  Mostly because the projects I’ve started on freekie.net have never worked, and Corey Rants seems to be more about what I blog about. Rants, raves and other stuff that happens in my life.    I’m thinking of possibly switching my twitter nickname from Freekie to Corey Rants.  It would create a single online presence, but haven’t decided what I want to do just yet.

I’ll keep you all updated as I progress on the Twitter handle.

Feel free to stop over to GoogleGoogleGoogleGoogle.com and write the author a few well wishes.

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Edit

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Professor Krause also wrote about this, check out his take on the topic.

Customer Support on Twitter, and Good P.R. AT&T’s new ride.


03 Feb

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Posted in Rambles, Raves | 1 Comment »

In Class we’ve discussed how more and more companies are taking an active role in social media. The best example that comes to mind is the @ComcastCares Team. If you tweet about them, odds are you will get a response asking if they can help. This has had mixed results in the past it seems, but it’s a little nifty to get a response from a big company saying that they actually do see you, the little person.

Last night, I tweeted, asking if anyone has ever forgotten to hit send when waiting for a text message. In replying to a follower, I wrote that my phone randomly switches to SOS (Emergency Calling only) mode quite often and needs a power cycle to fix it. I tagged my tweet #att #fail.

When I woke up in the morning, I had an @reply from @ATTCustomerCare “@Freekie Hi, I’m with AT&T and saw your tweet. If you DM you contact info, I can reach out to try to help. I’m following. Thanks!” I thought that it was pretty cool, however did wonder where this was when I had phone problems in the past. So, I followed them and sent my phone number along in a Direct Message. A few hours later, I got a voicemail from AT&T’s Social Media Department. He explained who he was, and why he was calling me. While I haven’t had a chance to call them back, it was pretty cool to actually get a response and know that they have an actual department to handle such things as twitter. I do wonder what else they monitor, if it’s face book, or what else. Apparently they have a presence on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and even YouTube. It is a pretty impressive list.

I think that it is very important for companies and even people to watch what is said about them on twitter and other social media places. Doing a quick google search usually finds you a good place to start. Search.twitter.com allows you to look over tweets that have been sent as well. I have a few of my frequent searches as an RSS feed and have it into my RSS reader. I think it’d be worth checking out for most companies to keep their tweeters happy. Good PR goes along way on the internets (sic).

IRC as a Social Media


11 Jan

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Posted in Random, Raves | 2 Comments »

As you may or may not know, I am a very frequent member of the IRC community.  IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, is a early internet technology that allows users to chat from all over the world in a simple and easy environment.   IRC has seen a new life come out recently from some social media events such as Online streaming.  UStream uses IRC to allow users to communicate within a community and show, Justin.TV uses a hacked form of IRC to communicate as well.

Depending on the network that you chat on, you can find users that chat about anything. From software development, fighting malware, talking about technology, or even discussing the latest movies and video games. IRC is a place that you can find many people to pass time and even find good bits of help and friends.

There are two networks that I frequent are GeekShed, and DevilsFreek.  GeekShed is ranked as one of the top 100 IRC networks that are rated by users and channels by SearchIRC.  DevilsFreek is more of a quiet and small community that is more of a test bed for my workings.

IRC has had a few bad bursts of publicity in the past, media often covers IRC as a place that hackers hack, and steal credit card numbers and botnets are from.  While there are a few places that this is true, the majority of IRC networks are safe and have active network administrators that keep the trouble makers away.

If you want to connect to GeekShed to take a peak at what IRC is, and what not, feel free to click the More button and a flash chat should appear below.

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How Social Media Changed us


07 Jan

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Posted in Random, Raves, School | 1 Comment »

A few days ago, I wrote about Social Media, and got more comments than I expected, and it gave me a lot to think about and yes I do plan to respond to the comments and discuss social media more.  However, this article

How Social Media Has Changed Us was sent to me, and it brings to light a few things that I haven’t completely considered before.

The article was sent to me, by my good friend tengrrl, who very much has education on her brain, and always looks out for the best interests of me, and everyone else.  What the article discusses is the different aspects of social media in our world. The main part that I like, is that it shows that children that use social media, are writing and reading, and thus then more that we read and write, the better we understand literacy. In an age that we hear more about children using txt chat to write their papers, its awesome to see more positive aspects about literacy.

I hope to have more time to comment about this further, but if you are interested in the social media world as much as I am, it would be a good read to take a peak at.

Thank you again to tengrrl for sending me this link :)

Text Rental and Chegg


07 Jan

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Posted in Raves, Reviews | 3 Comments »

A friend was asking me about our text rental system at UWSP the other day, and started asking me questions about chegg, so I thought I’d take time and share a great experience that i had with them

I am blessed to attend a school that provides text rental as part of our tuition, which means that we have very few books that we have to purchase, as most of them are provided in form of rental, for free. Well, somewhat free, it’s included in the weird fees that they charge us, but that’s another story.  The main benefit to these rentals is that it saves us money, but also the environment.

Well, what if you attend a school that doesn’t provide text rental, or that you want to just read a book that your local library doesn’t have?  The solution came to me last year when I needed to buy a book that was quite expensive and I only needed it for a few weeks of a class.  The answer is Chegg.

Chegg is the online version of my local text rental system.  You look for the books that you need, and odds are the book is in their system.  It tells you the price to rent the book for different lengths of times, ranging from a few weeks to a few months.  The books ship promptly, either from chegg’s offices, or from the publisher or Amazon if it’s a newer book.  In my case, the book arrived two days after I ordered it, directly from Amazon.  The system is also great, because for each book that is rented, they plant a tree to help restock the rain forests.

When you are done with the books, you log back into Chegg’s system and tell them that you want to return the book, and they provide you with a shipping label that is prepaid, and you drop it off at a shipping point. Boom. You are done and don’t get charged anything more than the rental charge.

But what happens if I don’t like the book or it’s the wrong one? Chegg offers a 30 day no questions return policy where you get your entire rental price back.

The system honestly is one of the coolest and quickest options for a text or book rental system.  If you do have books that you no longer want that you have purchased, you can sell them to Chegg, which is a cool option.  They take into factors things such as how many classes might be using this book, the update frequencies and stuff like that, but still, it’s a cool system to take a peek at.

Do something green for the environment and that is also easy on the wallet, and check out this cool system for any books that you need for the upcoming terms.

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Corey's Rants

A Web Developer's rants, raves and randomness.