The euphemistic phrase “reputation management issue” describes what happens when you have a problem arise in search engine result pages. Whether its the result of an algorithm change, bloggers or social media sites jumping on negative news or other negative linking bandwagons, reputation management issues are a major pain for brands.

When this happens, frustrations can run high, and you bear a lot of weight on your shoulders to fix the crisis, keep the unfavorable sites at bay and make clients happy. One of the key things you need to master quickly when this occurs is setting and managing client expectations.Reputation management in search results can be quite challenging, and on top of this you have frustrated clients who are pressured to make the negative content “go away.” More than other projects, reputation management projects seem to be the place where client expectation management is most vital. Here are a few areas where expectations need to be consistently managed throughout the process:

You can’t just “make it go away.” In the offline world people throw away their newspapers and magazines, and news programs rarely have re-runs making it easier for an issue to “go away” over time. However, in the online world, the information posted about your company stays online, ages, accrues links and is always accessible from anywhere. Expectation to set: Negative content in the search results won’t “just go away.” You will need to continuously get in the game and create positive online content about your brand across the web so that unfavorable content is pushed down in search results by positive content.

Nothing happens overnight. When a company lets the unfavorable content brew in the search results for a while, it gains search engine visibility and links. It didn’t happen overnight, and it won’t get fixed overnight. Expectation to set: It takes time. These sites didn’t rank instantly, and they aren’t likely to fall instantly either.

It’s not a project, and it doesn’t end. Unfortunately, once you have an online reputation problem, it doesn’t end, and as long as the unfavorable content is out there it is at risk of creeping back into the SERPs. Expectation to set: Once you have a search engine reputation management problem, it becomes the cost of doing business because if you stop, the unfavorable content has a higher risk of resurfacing in the future—the more negative content out there, the truer this is.

You’ll have ups and downs. As with any SEO project, there are wins and losses. Algorithms change, competing sites change and sometimes the unfavorable sites are working just as hard to rank for your brand terms as you are working to push them down. Expectation to set: At times it’s going to be a bumpy ride. You may be smooth sailing for a while and the next thing you know the negative content will be visible again. You need to make sure the client recognizes that the unfavorable sites are getting less and less visible over time, despite the blips here and there.

You must actually do something for something happen. Your client needs to be willing to act on the strategy you present. If they’re not willing to play in the game, launch the changes you proposed on their website or buy links to help favorable content rank, then there isn’t much you can do to make things move. Some companies want the change to happen, but when they get into the details they prefer to not do anything online to make that happen. Expectation to set: You must actually do what is recommended in order to make progress.

While it seems like a no-brainer, when I talk to other people who do reputation management, one of the big issues is managing client expectations and it’s something you must consistently reinforce as your report your progress. What it comes down to is that if you’re working with clients on reputation management issues, setting and managing expectations will be a one key element to keeping a satisfied client.

Jessica Bowman is an in-house SEO Evangelist at Yahoo! Inc. relishing in the human side of SEO, and author of the SEM / SEO In-house Blog. The In House column appears on Wednesdays at Search Engine Land.

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Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent guardian.co.uk, Tuesday January 29 2008

Mobile network O2 has overhauled the cost of using Apple’s iPhone handset just two months after it went on sale in the UK.

The mobile network today announced that iPhone owners who are currently paying its lower-rate tariffs of £35 and £45 per month would get a substantially improved package, and simultaneously introduced an expensive “super-tier” contract costing £75 per month.

The new deal will give up to three times as many free calls and text messages for the same price, with £35 tariff customers – who form the bulk of the user base – receiving 600 free minutes per month instead of 200. The company also said it was phasing out its existing £55 per month deal, moving customers to the equivalent £45 per month contract instead.

The high-end tariff, costing £75, will give users 3,000 minutes and 500 texts. The £269 cost of the iPhone itself remains unchanged, and the length of all new contracts will remain at 18 months, said the company. It also confirmed that the iPhone’s free access to wireless internet provided by Cloud will stay in place.

Whiirl of publicity

O2 has exclusive British rights to carry the iPhone, which launched last year in a whirl of publicity. The new tariffs bring the costs of using Apple’s handset into line with many of O2’s other deals, but some critics will undoubtedly be concerned that the new offers are being launched as a remedy for poor sales - particularly in light of press reports that the handset has not met O2’s sales targets.

Apple has yet to release UK sales figures, although chief executive Steve Jobs said earlier this month that 4 million iPhones had been shipped worldwide since the gadget first went on sale in the US last summer.

In a statement, O2 said that it was happy with the performance of the iPhone and existing customers would be pleased with the changes.

“The iPhone is already our fastest-ever selling device and this added value will allow us to appeal to an even greater segment of the market - it is an unbeatable proposition,” said UK marketing director Sally Cowdry.

However, the Financial Times has quoted sources suggesting that the handset had sold 190,000 units in the run-up to Christmas, falling narrowly short of O2’s public expectations of 200,000 in the first eight weeks.

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Until recently, Nokia’s software efforts have been perceived as the opposite of open: closed. Sure, the world’s largest cell-phone maker has participated in open-source mobile Linux projects like remote sensing. It’s also released a few Linux-based phones. But such initiatives have been far and few between.

To write programs for Nokia smartphones, software developers have had to learn ins-and-outs of Nokia-supported Symbian operating system. Nokia has exercised much control over development and charged hefty fees. That’s why so many programmers have flocked to Google’s Android, an open-source operating system for cell phones that was announced last fall. Android is free to use, and poses few restrictions.

But now, Nokia appears to be making more steps toward going open, too. Today, the company announced it acquired Trolltech, known for its open-source mobile software. This is the strongest indication yet that Nokia is empracing open source. And that could have huge implications for the future of mobile Linux and for Android.

With Nokia’s support, Trolltech may turn into a widely used mobile Linux platform — and further contribute to fragmentation of the Linux developer community. There are already more than 20 flavors of Linux. Android, the strongest of the bunch, was expected to unite Linux developers. Now, however, some developers that might have jumped onto Android may stick with Nokia.

Clearly, the mobile software battle is heating up.

Posted by: Olga Kharif on January 28 Read Full Article

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A number of iPod owners have discovered that their recently purchased iPods won’t work with Apple’s new iTunes video rentals, even though the iPods have video playback capabilities.

As of Tuesday, the issue had been raised multiple times in Apple’s support forums. So far the company’s only response has been to confirm that movie rentals work only with the iPhone, iPod touch, iPod classic and the third-generation iPod nano. Earlier iPods, including fifth-generation iPods sold before the September 2007 release of the sixth-generation iPod classic, are incompatible with rented videos.

“This is false advertising,” says Raymond Blanchard, a disgruntled iPod owner. “I demand an upgrade or fix.”

Others were more upset over the apparent randomness of Apple’s decision.

“Why on earth would they not make this service available to fifth-generation iPods?” one forum poster notes. “Mine is less than six months old! If all of the other services are available for the fifth-generation video iPods, why not rentals? I have a tough time believing it would not be technically feasible.”

Indeed, Apple has recently boosted functionality in certain products with firmware updates — while offering no upgrades (or charging for upgrades) for other products. At the recent Macworld exposition, Steve Jobs elicited cheers from Apple fans by announcing a completely reworked AppleTV and saying that the upgrade would be free to previous AppleTV owners. Similarly, iPhone users received a free firmware upgrade that allows them to use new features like webclips, multiperson text messaging and enhanced Google map functions. Owners of the iPod touch, on the other hand, have to pay $20 for those same features, a fact that likely has to do with Apple’s accounting and revenue realization practices.

Apple did not immediately respond to Wired’s request for comment, and the company has yet to provide any definitive reason why its fifth-generation iPods won’t work with iTunes movie rentals. But that’s not stopping the speculation.

Some analysts, like Forrester’s James McQuivey, say the issue could be related to digital rights management or a planned obsolescence strategy — encouraging people to buy the most current generation iPods.

For now, the most likely suspect has to do with what some have deemed the “analog hole” present in 5-G iPods. Previous generation iPods have an analog video output that works with standard video cables. As some have observed, this theoretically makes it easier to copy rented movies, by plugging the iPod into a camcorder or other video-recording device.

In the most recent iPod classic and iPods nano models, the TV-out port no longer works with older, third-party video cables and docks — most likely in order to close the analog hole, according to The Unofficial Apple Weblog’s Christina Warren.

“I guess it would just be too much of a risk for Apple (and the movie studios) to allow 5-G customers (to) connect their iPods to a TV via an open TV-out cable so that the (standard-definition) content could then be captured using the analog hole,” Warren concludes in a recent post.

Yankee Group’s Carl Howe offers another likely reason for 5-G iPod-rental incompatibility.

“The other factor is whether you have a secure real-time clock,” Howe explains. “Why do I want a secure clock? Because you don’t want people messing with the time code since (iTunes) rentals are only supposed to last 24 hours after you start viewing them.”

This was almost certainly a requirement imposed by the movie studios, he concludes. Indeed, some users recently discovered that by setting back the clocks on their PCs, they could temporarily extend the duration of their iTunes movie rentals, and movie studios probably wanted to limit their exposure to that hack.

In short, Howe says, iPods don’t fall under the growing trend of “hardware as a service,” whereby hardware receives continuous upgrades via firmware updates.

“(The iPod is) ‘hardware as hardware’ instead of ‘hardware as service,’” Howe says. “Not that that’s going to be very consoling for iPod owners.”

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Ian Williams, vnunet.com 28 Jan 2008

The US market for mobile games will rise from less than $800m in 2007 to more than $3bn by 2012, according to analysts.

A report from Juniper Research suggests that around 18 million Americans download or rent mobile games at least once a year, and that this number is expected to increase sharply over the next five years.

Juniper attributes the rise to the introduction of free trial periods for subscription-based games, as well as improvements in the user interface of mobile phones and all-you-can-eat data packages.

“This ‘try before you buy’ strategy makes the customer more comfortable about purchasing a particular title,” said Dr Windsor Holden, the report’s author.

“But it also makes the customer more familiar with mobile gameplay and will provide further encouragement to seek out additional titles in the future.”

The research also predicts that around 30 per cent of mobile game downloads in the US will be ad-funded by 2012, and that the increasing sophistication of high-end games combined with improved form factor in handsets should enable publishers to increase retail price points.

However, growth in the US will still lag behind China, the Far East and Western Europe over the next five years.

The report also warned that the poor marketing of mobile titles means that many customers are frequently unaware of new releases.

Juniper urges publishers to focus on enhancing their portfolios of ‘lifestyle games’ as a means of expanding the mobile gaming demographic.

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Skyfire’s free mobile browser is meant to support everything a PC browser can, including Flash, QuickTime, JavaScript, and AJAX

By Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service January 28, 2008

A growing set of developers is setting to work making Web browsing on a phone match the experience on a PC.

Skyfire, a startup in Mountain View, Calif., joined the fray on Monday when it unveiled a free browser intended to support everything a PC browser can. That includes Flash video, QuickTime, JavaScript, AJAX, and more, though not everything may be there right now, according to Nitin Bhandari, Skyfire’s CEO. The browser is now in a private beta test for U.S. users only. The software was demonstrated at the Demo conference in Palm Desert, Calif.

Apple’s iPhone changed the mobile browsing world last year when it drew a huge following with its Safari browser. Unlike most browsers for phones, it lets users view a full, standard Web page all at once and zoom in to make up for the small size of the screen, though it doesn’t support Flash video and some other standard Web features.

Meanwhile, more opportunities have opened up for third parties to get any sort of application onto a consumer’s mobile phone. Parts of Google’s Android development environment are already available to developers, and Apple is preparing a software development kit for the iPhone. Both Verizon and Sprint Nextel, two of the biggest U.S. operators, have outlined plans to allow any device and any application on mobile networks.

“The iPhone has pretty much settled the debate. People want a rich, full Web experience,” Skyfire’s Bhandari said. “There’s a lot of consciousness that that’s the bottom now, and everything now has to be there or above it.”

Since the phone’s June debut, Mozilla has started developing a mobile version of Firefox, which looks somewhat like mobile Safari in screenshots on Mozilla’s wiki. However, Mozilla has been vague about when that software will come out. Norwegian browser vendor Opera has its own mobile browser, Opera Mini.

Skyfire’s product will be set apart from Opera Mini and others by supporting the full browsing experience, Bhandari said. It does so by relieving the phone from some of the heavy lifting of presenting a Web page. In fact, a server transcodes every page into an efficient protocol that Skyfire has developed over the past 18 months, he said. The additional exchange of packets between phone and server to make that possible isn’t a problem, because the server can carry out tasks much faster than a phone, according to Bhandari.

“The delay added by the server is actually such a small percentage of the time we’re actually saving … that it’s actually a huge benefit in the end-user experience,” Bhandari said. Skyfire operates the servers in its own datacenter.

Skyfire can deliver full versions of popular Web sites, such as YouTube and ESPN, as demonstrated in a YouTube video. The zooming function, the critical tool for viewing full-size Web pages on a small screen, is different from the iPhone’s “pinch” and “unpinch” gestures. A gray box appears over part of the Web page, and users can size that box to cover the area of the page they want to see full-screen, then tap on it to zoom in, Bhandari said. The browser also features a search bar and a tab with featured links in categories including news, sports, and video.

The browser is available only for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 today, but a version for Symbian, as well as an international beta test, are coming later, Bhandari said. Skyfire might also develop versions for Android and for the iPhone once Apple’s SDK becomes available, he said. It is talking with handset makers and mobile operators about having the browser built into phones, but also sees search and advertising as possible revenue sources.

In addition to invited testers, a limited number of public users will be allowed to participate in the beta. They can sign up at Skyfire’s Web site.

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