County to use herbicides to reduce right of way mowing
ll implement a new vegetation control program the first week of February. Instead of cutting grass on 82 roads throughout the county totaling about 200 miles, the county will spray them with herbicides.
The Jackson County Road Department plans to spray in February and June to reduce the frequency of mowing.
Some 6,000 residents will be affected. They should receive letters in the mail informing them of the changes within the coming weeks.
Residents who do not wish to have their property sprayed must post a sign next to their right of way stating, “Do not spray.”
The department spends about $40,000 on right of way maintenance and equipment each year. The move will save about 40 percent of that, including the elimination of one job, according to road department director Larry Guthrie.
The roads include:
Airport Road, Antioch Church Road, Apple Valley Road, B. Whitfield Road, B. Wilson Road, Bill Watkins Road, Bob Mann Road, Boone Road, Brock Road and Brockton Loop.
Also, Cabin Creek Road, Carruth Road, Chandler Bridge Road, Cooper Farm Road, Creek Nation Road, Crooked Creek Road, Davenport Road, Deadwyler Road, Dixon Bridge Road and Doster Road.
Also, Ebenezer Church Road, Ednaville Road, Erastus Church Road, Ethridge Road, Galilee Church Road, Geiger Road, Gum Springs Church Road, Harmony Church Road, Harold Phillips Road, Harris Lord Cemetery Road, Holiday Cemetery Road, Hoods Mill Road and Hubert Pittman Road.
Also, Jefferson River Road, Jesse Cronic Road, John Collier Road, Josh Pirkle Road, Lavender Road, Lebanon Church Road and Lyle Field Road.
Also, Maddox Road, Mark Dodd Road, Marlow Road, Marshall Clark Road, Mary Collier Road, Mountain Creek Church Road, Mt. Olive Road, New Kings Bridge Road, New Liberty Church Road, Old Kings Bridge Road, Old Pendergrass Road and Old State Road.
Also, Pond Fork Church Road, Ridgeway Church Road, Sandy Creek Road, Sanford Road, Savage Road, Sheep Pasture Road, Apple Valley Road, Steve Reynolds Industrial Parkway, Stockton Farm Road, Tal Phillips Road, Tallassee Road, Tapp Wood, Thompson Mill Road, Thyatira-Brockton Road, W.H. Hayes Road, Wayne Poultry Road, Wehunt Road, Wheeler Cemetery Road, Wheeler Lane, Wheeler Road, White Hill School Road, Wilhite Road and Woods Bridge Road.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Official World Cup Sponsors Show Higher Effectiveness with TV Ads
Although neither the the USA or England teams remain contenders for the World Cup, TV advertisers in the U.S. and U.K. appear to have scored with viewers during the first half of the tournament, according to a Nielsen analysis of advertising effectiveness in the two countries.
In the U.S, Nielsen monitored national advertising during weekend ABC and ESPN matches, plus all Team USA matches from June 11-26, and found that official sponsors connected better with World Cup fans. Nielsen data showed that the five primary World Cup TV sponsors (Adidas, AT&T, Budweiser, Hyundai and Sony) generated 55% higher Net Likeability on average compared to commercials from other, non-sponsor World Cup advertisers. The sponsors also generated 16% higher Brand Recall on average for their World Cup in-game/in-studio elements, such as the Hyundai “Halftime Report” and the Adidas “First Half Highlights,” versus their typical in-game sponsorship performance in other sporting events.
“Nielsen data clearly shows an advantage for U.S. sponsors who have had an expanded presence in the matches with in-game or in-studio elements,” said Alan Gould, CEO of Nielsen IAG, which measures TV advertising effectiveness and program engagement. “The presence of these elements, which are integrated seamlessly into programming, is likely bolstering the effectiveness of these brands’ traditional TV commercials that air around the matches.”
In examining ad performance of new campaigns launched by World Cup sponsors and non-sponsors since the start of the tournament, Nielsen data also showed that ads from Budweiser, M&M’s, Macy’s, Sony and Hyundai scored highest in Net Likeability, with the greatest percentage of World Cup TV viewers recalling the commercial, the advertised brand, and reporting to like the ad “a lot” or “somewhat.”
Even World Cup fans are not immune to the gender divide as Nielsen ad effectiveness data shows that some World Cup ads seemed to be more engaging to certain genders in the U.S. While ads for Nike and Hyundai generated the high Net Likeability for female World Cup TV viewers, ads from Adidas and Cisco were hits with male audiences.
In the U.S, Nielsen monitored national advertising during weekend ABC and ESPN matches, plus all Team USA matches from June 11-26, and found that official sponsors connected better with World Cup fans. Nielsen data showed that the five primary World Cup TV sponsors (Adidas, AT&T, Budweiser, Hyundai and Sony) generated 55% higher Net Likeability on average compared to commercials from other, non-sponsor World Cup advertisers. The sponsors also generated 16% higher Brand Recall on average for their World Cup in-game/in-studio elements, such as the Hyundai “Halftime Report” and the Adidas “First Half Highlights,” versus their typical in-game sponsorship performance in other sporting events.
“Nielsen data clearly shows an advantage for U.S. sponsors who have had an expanded presence in the matches with in-game or in-studio elements,” said Alan Gould, CEO of Nielsen IAG, which measures TV advertising effectiveness and program engagement. “The presence of these elements, which are integrated seamlessly into programming, is likely bolstering the effectiveness of these brands’ traditional TV commercials that air around the matches.”
In examining ad performance of new campaigns launched by World Cup sponsors and non-sponsors since the start of the tournament, Nielsen data also showed that ads from Budweiser, M&M’s, Macy’s, Sony and Hyundai scored highest in Net Likeability, with the greatest percentage of World Cup TV viewers recalling the commercial, the advertised brand, and reporting to like the ad “a lot” or “somewhat.”
Even World Cup fans are not immune to the gender divide as Nielsen ad effectiveness data shows that some World Cup ads seemed to be more engaging to certain genders in the U.S. While ads for Nike and Hyundai generated the high Net Likeability for female World Cup TV viewers, ads from Adidas and Cisco were hits with male audiences.
Blood drive Tuesday at First Baptist
The American Red Cross will hold a blood drive Tuesday, July 13, from noon to 6:00 p.m., at the First Baptist Church of Commerce Family Life Center, 1345 S. Elm Street.
The American Red Cross provides blood services to all area hospitals, including BJC Hospital, Athens Regional Medical Center and the Gainesville and Atlanta hospitals.
The Red Cross recently cited a critical need for O negative type blood. O negative is the “universal donor” type that can be given to any person of any blood type.
Potential donors must be 17, weigh at least 110 pounds and be in good health.
All donors will receive a Chick-fil-A coupon and have their names entered in a drawing for a $1,000 gift card.
The American Red Cross provides blood services to all area hospitals, including BJC Hospital, Athens Regional Medical Center and the Gainesville and Atlanta hospitals.
The Red Cross recently cited a critical need for O negative type blood. O negative is the “universal donor” type that can be given to any person of any blood type.
Potential donors must be 17, weigh at least 110 pounds and be in good health.
All donors will receive a Chick-fil-A coupon and have their names entered in a drawing for a $1,000 gift card.
Monday, July 5, 2010
PayPal expects $500M in mobile payments volume by year-end
PayPal, an eBay company, has rolled out a mobile version of its Express Checkout service that lets merchants offer the same PayPal experience for their on-the-go customers.
Mobile Express Checkout is being launched initially on the iPhone and Android 2.0 and higher devices by several retailers, including Nike and Buy.com, over the next few weeks. Mobile Express Checkout will be available for the rest of PayPal’s merchants later this summer.
Mobile Commerce Daily’s Dan Butcher interviewed Bill Zielke, senior director of merchant services at PayPal, San Jose, CA. Here is what he had to say:
What is PayPal’s strategy behind the launch of Mobile Express Checkout?
We wanted to give our merchants a mobile version of PayPal’s proven Express Checkout technology, which gives merchants an easy way to engage with consumers and enable transactions via the mobile channel.
In a PayPal survey, 100 merchants reported that the seamless online checkout experience of Express Checkout boosted sales an average 14 percent.
Mobile Express Checkout allows merchants to offer the same safe, convenient PayPal experience to their on-the-go customers, including a one-stop payment service that does not require a complex back-end infrastructure.
It offers quick deployment to get merchants in the mobile game fast. It works with existing systems and offers easy integration with Express Checkout.
The customer experience is easy—especially important with tiny screens and keyboards. No cumbersome data entry: just a few clicks and you are done.
The platform provides access to the millions of PayPal’s payment enabled consumers with unspent dollars—PayPal accounts contain well over $2 billion in stored value that is spent every two weeks.
Mobile Express Checkout helps detect fraud and other payment-related issues.
The product is currently in a pilot phase with a few innovative merchants such as Buy.com and Nike. It will be generally available later this summer.
What trends are you seeing in the mobile commerce/payments ecosystem?
Mobile commerce is growing at a remarkable rate and PayPal has seen this in the mobile transactions going through our system.
As an example, our mobile transactions increased nearly six-fold-from $25 million in 2008 to $141 million in 2009.
We expect to close out 2010 with more than half a billion dollars in mobile payment volume.
There is a huge opportunity—almost obligation—for merchants to get onboard and start offering a mobile checkout solution to their customers especially as they prepare for the holiday shopping season.
How are consumers’ attitudes towards mobile payments changing?
The proliferation of smartphones has really changed the way consumers look at online shopping.
In fact, Gartner reported that smartphone sales surpassed 172.4 million units in 2009.
At PayPal, we expect to close out 2010 with over $500 million in mobile payment volume and more than 5 million members regularly using PayPal from mobile devices.
Consumers are clearly starting to adopt mcommerce in droves and mobile is no longer seen a fringe channel—it is mainstream.
What is the current state of mobile payments, and what is the potential for the rest of the year and beyond?
The potential for mcommerce is almost off the charts.
A recent report from ABI Research predicted that by 2015, consumers are expected to spend $119 billion through their mobile phones, accounting for nearly 8 percent of all ecommerce.
Shoppers expect to be met on their phones with opportunities to shop and make purchases, a key reason we’re rolling out Mobile Express Checkout.
We think that the merchant community is ready to embrace this technology in a major way and we’re excited to see mobile commerce’s growth both in the short term and further down the road.
Mobile Express Checkout is being launched initially on the iPhone and Android 2.0 and higher devices by several retailers, including Nike and Buy.com, over the next few weeks. Mobile Express Checkout will be available for the rest of PayPal’s merchants later this summer.
Mobile Commerce Daily’s Dan Butcher interviewed Bill Zielke, senior director of merchant services at PayPal, San Jose, CA. Here is what he had to say:
What is PayPal’s strategy behind the launch of Mobile Express Checkout?
We wanted to give our merchants a mobile version of PayPal’s proven Express Checkout technology, which gives merchants an easy way to engage with consumers and enable transactions via the mobile channel.
In a PayPal survey, 100 merchants reported that the seamless online checkout experience of Express Checkout boosted sales an average 14 percent.
Mobile Express Checkout allows merchants to offer the same safe, convenient PayPal experience to their on-the-go customers, including a one-stop payment service that does not require a complex back-end infrastructure.
It offers quick deployment to get merchants in the mobile game fast. It works with existing systems and offers easy integration with Express Checkout.
The customer experience is easy—especially important with tiny screens and keyboards. No cumbersome data entry: just a few clicks and you are done.
The platform provides access to the millions of PayPal’s payment enabled consumers with unspent dollars—PayPal accounts contain well over $2 billion in stored value that is spent every two weeks.
Mobile Express Checkout helps detect fraud and other payment-related issues.
The product is currently in a pilot phase with a few innovative merchants such as Buy.com and Nike. It will be generally available later this summer.
What trends are you seeing in the mobile commerce/payments ecosystem?
Mobile commerce is growing at a remarkable rate and PayPal has seen this in the mobile transactions going through our system.
As an example, our mobile transactions increased nearly six-fold-from $25 million in 2008 to $141 million in 2009.
We expect to close out 2010 with more than half a billion dollars in mobile payment volume.
There is a huge opportunity—almost obligation—for merchants to get onboard and start offering a mobile checkout solution to their customers especially as they prepare for the holiday shopping season.
How are consumers’ attitudes towards mobile payments changing?
The proliferation of smartphones has really changed the way consumers look at online shopping.
In fact, Gartner reported that smartphone sales surpassed 172.4 million units in 2009.
At PayPal, we expect to close out 2010 with over $500 million in mobile payment volume and more than 5 million members regularly using PayPal from mobile devices.
Consumers are clearly starting to adopt mcommerce in droves and mobile is no longer seen a fringe channel—it is mainstream.
What is the current state of mobile payments, and what is the potential for the rest of the year and beyond?
The potential for mcommerce is almost off the charts.
A recent report from ABI Research predicted that by 2015, consumers are expected to spend $119 billion through their mobile phones, accounting for nearly 8 percent of all ecommerce.
Shoppers expect to be met on their phones with opportunities to shop and make purchases, a key reason we’re rolling out Mobile Express Checkout.
We think that the merchant community is ready to embrace this technology in a major way and we’re excited to see mobile commerce’s growth both in the short term and further down the road.
The State of Affino - Summer 2010
Things are moving very fast with Affino, so to help everyone get up to speed, and to provide insight into where Affino is evolving. Here’s a quick recap of the key milestones we’ve hit this year (there have been quite a few), the current projects we’re working on and the plans for the next six months.
This is very much a Big Picture overview.
The Year So Far (skip this if you just want to know what’s coming up)
We started the year by rolling out the first phase of Affino as a Social Commerce Hub with the Twitter integration and the Social Campaigns. We then built on this when we rolled out the direct integration with Facebook. We also greatly improved incoming feed handling, with custom integration with Twitter and YouTube feeds.
The roll-out of the eCommerce APIs was a big step forward for standardising Affino’s integration with 3rd party accountancy, stock-control and accountancy solutions. The biggest strides have been made around the checkout and conversion process which has seen the single-page-checkout become far more streamlined and dynamic, with much tighter integration with the leading payment gateways.
We also greatly improved Affino’s SEO abilities, to get Affino sites top billing on Google and other search engines. The evolution of Topic Channels, and the phenomenal results they are able to get show just how far Affino has come. The roll out of canonical links and SEO page titles has further improved the ability of sites to rank highly. On-site search now has predictive search and refined results browsing, fully integrated with the shopping basket.
We also rolled out dozens of media enhancements with new Document and Artwork listings and streamlined the media uploader with great Zip file handling. The Media Editor has also been extensively reworked to be more effective.
To make the user experience more engaging, we’ve introduced or significantly enhanced a dozen Design Elements which make Affino pages much more dynamic and engaging, including: Photo Stack, Blog Highlights, Main Menu, Highlights Scroller, Stunt, Carousel, Related and Recommended Products, Detailed Standard Section, Tips, Video Carousel, Video Player, Newsletter Sign-up, Login and Welcome.
The social side has seen significant updates, especially Groups which have been evolved very significantly over the past couple of releases and will reach maturity in the coming release. The developments will put groups right at the heart of your communities. Newsletters have seen dramatic improvements with the introduction of event triggers and filters; it means they are now one of the most effective tools for targeting your community.
A lot of work has also gone into improving Analytics in Affino with the further roll out and evolution of Affino Dashboards. More significant has been the full integration with Google Analytics and Google Website Optimiser as well as improved integration with Google Webmaster Tools.
Big improvements have also come for users rolling out new sites with the introduction of Structure Copy for copying whole website trees and Affino’s greatly improved support for CSS for page styling.
Team productivity has been boosted with numerous Forum and workflow enhancements and the roll out of the Team Time Status Board and activity reports. The enhancements to My Messaging allows for a much more effective on-site messaging experience.
Finally, throughout we have rolled out dozens of usability and productivity enhancements such as the updated Live Editor, improved Blogs, nicer forms, upgraded Application Bar, better recommendations, and easier creation of content relationships.
For the full picture you can always go to the Affino Update History.
The Upcoming Affino Release
I’m not going to go too much into this as it’s going to be a separate post I’ll be doing next week, but it’s fair to say that the upcoming release is going to be very significant. Key highlights are: Google Base and eBay integration; eCommerce 3.3 (aka greatly improved order processing and ecommerce management); on-site PayPal payments; further checkout enhancements; user generated Ads; localised recommendations; a lot of new community monetisation capabilities; and a whole lot more.
The Next Six Months
There will be many projects Comrz will be working on to enhance Affino over the coming months. These are the key ones:
Learn-ability and Usability
We have a constant focus on making Affino more usable, and this past year has seen much of Affino transformed when it comes to key tasks, especially when rolling out new sites. The focus for the coming six months will be more on learn-ability rather than usability. Most of the interfaces are now pretty usable, there are still some less used ones which could use a makeover, but increasingly the issues our users are facing are not in terms of being able to do stuff, rather the issues are based around Affino’s amazing scope and flexibility, and how to make the most of it. This boils down to learn-ability. We have some key projects in mind that will help guide users through their tasks.
On a simple level this means many more To Do lists such as the one found in Commerce control panel. A much more significant project will be the re-working of many of the key control screens to create clustered panels focused on tasks, i.e. creating a Newsletter or setting up a new micro-site.
We do have dozens of smaller usability-based projects lined up and every release will see a number of improvements.
Social Commerce Hub Evolution
Every release of Affino will see wider and deeper integration with the leading social, commercial and media sites on the web. The reality of the ’splinternet’ is that many users experience the web in safe and familiar locations. The key social ones are without doubt Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Affino already integrates with both the former, and will integrate with the latter in the near future. On the commercial side people increasingly rely on Google Product Searches, eBay and Amazon as key commercial aggregators which they buy from.
We will be rapidly evolving Affino’s integration with these key portals so that they are much deeper and more dynamic. On the social side we will be integrating with Facebook and Twitter as closely as possible to share content, media and networks. We will be rolling out increasingly dynamic interfaces and using the full capabilities of the Facebook and Twitter APIs.
Commercially we will be rolling out a F-commerce integration, i.e. Facebook / Affino store integration. More significantly we’ll be extending the eBay and Google Base integration further into a much more dynamic full sales-cycle integration. We will also be rolling out full sales-cycle integration with Amazon. These projects won’t happen over-night, but will be continuously evolved over the coming six month period. We will also be integrating with more of the key commercial promotion sites as the requirement arises.
Mobile
What may well turn out to be the biggest undertaking (if not the Social Commerce Hub) is going to be the roll-out of the new Affino Mobile platform. We will be evolving Affino for Mobile in the same way as we are evolving Affino for Newsletters. It means that a sub-set of the Affino components will be optimised specifically for mobile publishing.
Right now mobile development is evolving in two ways: device specific apps and mobile web apps. For the coming months our focus will be on Mobile Web Apps. The key reason for this is that we will be looking to develop cross-mobile-platform apps which will work with the leading mobile platforms. Initially we will optimise for iPhones / iPads / iPods and Android, we next see us also optimising for MeeGo.
In practice there will be a new Mobile Zone which will partner with a Web Zone. These will share the same User-base / Community (User Profile) and Store (Store Profile), both of which will be extended with mobile components.
We’re expecting the development of the mobile platform to be very dynamic and there may be significant changes of direction during the roll-out as we take on board all the feedback from each roll-out. Expect public Alpha and Beta versions during the autumn / fall.
Targeting
Affino now has five active member targeting dimensions: interests (topics), network (friends / contacts), location, triggers (i.e. user behaviour), security (membership / partner), as well as all the passive targeting of related content, ’people who bought x bought y’, trending products / content / members etc.
We feel that this is fairly comprehensive in its breadth, but there is a great deal we will be doing on the depth, i.e. more trigger events, improved awards, and more localisation enhancements / database integration. We are very open-minded about this area and expect it to evolve consistently over the coming months.
More Engaging Communities
We will be doing significant upgrades on the public profiles. The first stage will be to completely revamp the Main tab on each member’s profile. Instead of being independent spaces where users post media, status updates and comments, we’ll be consolidating it into a single feed so that users can chose with a click to post a simple update or upload an image or an embedded YouTube video.
The feed will also include member’s recent blog posts and latest articles. It will also be possible to comment on each item. It means we should see many more conversations happening within the community.
Game Mechanics - we will be introducing game mechanics to Affino for the first time. These will be points and badge based and can be used both for fun and for more serious customer motivation / targeting purposes. Depending on projects, we may even take this one step further and tie it directly into payment / cash values / rewards.
Media Hub
Affino is already something of a media hub since it can handle many forms of image, video and audio content. The incoming media feeds, in particular YouTube feeds mean that it functions very well for aggregating media content and creating topical media pages.
The next stage will see the integration with a lot more 3rd parties, but more significantly we will be turning Affino into a video distribution hub. It means that if you upload a video clip with the associated meta data, Affino will automatically distribute it to the leading video portals including YouTube and Metacafe.
We will also be integrating directly into 3rd party video online production and encoding solutions. It means you can upload a video and have it transcoded / video thumbnails created. This will be essential for the shift to HTML 5 video which has now become a nightmare of codec support requirements: H.264, Ogg Theora and WebM.
We will be developing HTML5 based MP3 and video players, but this technology is still very rough around the edges. The clear priority will be to support WebKit, i.e. iPhone / iPad / iPod, but there are clear limits on what we will be able to do here in the near term.
Rounding out Affino’s eCommerce Capabilities
We have a lot of plans to further round out Affino’s ecommerce capabilities and to improve the back-end management interfaces. We’ve started on what is going to be a major ongoing effort over the coming months with the eCommerce 3.3 project, but that is just the start.
We’ll be developing many more of the traditional ecommerce management functions such as stock management; supplier chain management; and direct integration with couriers. There are a number of areas we can evolve Affino on the ecommerce side, and it will all depend on customer priorities.
Priorities
As always, priorities will evolve so the end result of the coming month will be somewhat different from that outlined above, but many of the projects mentioned will have been started and completed.
We will continue to roll out new Affino releases every two months or so, so be prepared to embrace all the new enhancements coming your way and to make the most of them.
Let me know if you feel strongly about particular projects, or if you feel there are other aspects we should be looking into. Hopefully you’ll be as excited about what’s coming as we are
This is very much a Big Picture overview.
The Year So Far (skip this if you just want to know what’s coming up)
We started the year by rolling out the first phase of Affino as a Social Commerce Hub with the Twitter integration and the Social Campaigns. We then built on this when we rolled out the direct integration with Facebook. We also greatly improved incoming feed handling, with custom integration with Twitter and YouTube feeds.
The roll-out of the eCommerce APIs was a big step forward for standardising Affino’s integration with 3rd party accountancy, stock-control and accountancy solutions. The biggest strides have been made around the checkout and conversion process which has seen the single-page-checkout become far more streamlined and dynamic, with much tighter integration with the leading payment gateways.
We also greatly improved Affino’s SEO abilities, to get Affino sites top billing on Google and other search engines. The evolution of Topic Channels, and the phenomenal results they are able to get show just how far Affino has come. The roll out of canonical links and SEO page titles has further improved the ability of sites to rank highly. On-site search now has predictive search and refined results browsing, fully integrated with the shopping basket.
We also rolled out dozens of media enhancements with new Document and Artwork listings and streamlined the media uploader with great Zip file handling. The Media Editor has also been extensively reworked to be more effective.
To make the user experience more engaging, we’ve introduced or significantly enhanced a dozen Design Elements which make Affino pages much more dynamic and engaging, including: Photo Stack, Blog Highlights, Main Menu, Highlights Scroller, Stunt, Carousel, Related and Recommended Products, Detailed Standard Section, Tips, Video Carousel, Video Player, Newsletter Sign-up, Login and Welcome.
The social side has seen significant updates, especially Groups which have been evolved very significantly over the past couple of releases and will reach maturity in the coming release. The developments will put groups right at the heart of your communities. Newsletters have seen dramatic improvements with the introduction of event triggers and filters; it means they are now one of the most effective tools for targeting your community.
A lot of work has also gone into improving Analytics in Affino with the further roll out and evolution of Affino Dashboards. More significant has been the full integration with Google Analytics and Google Website Optimiser as well as improved integration with Google Webmaster Tools.
Big improvements have also come for users rolling out new sites with the introduction of Structure Copy for copying whole website trees and Affino’s greatly improved support for CSS for page styling.
Team productivity has been boosted with numerous Forum and workflow enhancements and the roll out of the Team Time Status Board and activity reports. The enhancements to My Messaging allows for a much more effective on-site messaging experience.
Finally, throughout we have rolled out dozens of usability and productivity enhancements such as the updated Live Editor, improved Blogs, nicer forms, upgraded Application Bar, better recommendations, and easier creation of content relationships.
For the full picture you can always go to the Affino Update History.
The Upcoming Affino Release
I’m not going to go too much into this as it’s going to be a separate post I’ll be doing next week, but it’s fair to say that the upcoming release is going to be very significant. Key highlights are: Google Base and eBay integration; eCommerce 3.3 (aka greatly improved order processing and ecommerce management); on-site PayPal payments; further checkout enhancements; user generated Ads; localised recommendations; a lot of new community monetisation capabilities; and a whole lot more.
The Next Six Months
There will be many projects Comrz will be working on to enhance Affino over the coming months. These are the key ones:
Learn-ability and Usability
We have a constant focus on making Affino more usable, and this past year has seen much of Affino transformed when it comes to key tasks, especially when rolling out new sites. The focus for the coming six months will be more on learn-ability rather than usability. Most of the interfaces are now pretty usable, there are still some less used ones which could use a makeover, but increasingly the issues our users are facing are not in terms of being able to do stuff, rather the issues are based around Affino’s amazing scope and flexibility, and how to make the most of it. This boils down to learn-ability. We have some key projects in mind that will help guide users through their tasks.
On a simple level this means many more To Do lists such as the one found in Commerce control panel. A much more significant project will be the re-working of many of the key control screens to create clustered panels focused on tasks, i.e. creating a Newsletter or setting up a new micro-site.
We do have dozens of smaller usability-based projects lined up and every release will see a number of improvements.
Social Commerce Hub Evolution
Every release of Affino will see wider and deeper integration with the leading social, commercial and media sites on the web. The reality of the ’splinternet’ is that many users experience the web in safe and familiar locations. The key social ones are without doubt Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Affino already integrates with both the former, and will integrate with the latter in the near future. On the commercial side people increasingly rely on Google Product Searches, eBay and Amazon as key commercial aggregators which they buy from.
We will be rapidly evolving Affino’s integration with these key portals so that they are much deeper and more dynamic. On the social side we will be integrating with Facebook and Twitter as closely as possible to share content, media and networks. We will be rolling out increasingly dynamic interfaces and using the full capabilities of the Facebook and Twitter APIs.
Commercially we will be rolling out a F-commerce integration, i.e. Facebook / Affino store integration. More significantly we’ll be extending the eBay and Google Base integration further into a much more dynamic full sales-cycle integration. We will also be rolling out full sales-cycle integration with Amazon. These projects won’t happen over-night, but will be continuously evolved over the coming six month period. We will also be integrating with more of the key commercial promotion sites as the requirement arises.
Mobile
What may well turn out to be the biggest undertaking (if not the Social Commerce Hub) is going to be the roll-out of the new Affino Mobile platform. We will be evolving Affino for Mobile in the same way as we are evolving Affino for Newsletters. It means that a sub-set of the Affino components will be optimised specifically for mobile publishing.
Right now mobile development is evolving in two ways: device specific apps and mobile web apps. For the coming months our focus will be on Mobile Web Apps. The key reason for this is that we will be looking to develop cross-mobile-platform apps which will work with the leading mobile platforms. Initially we will optimise for iPhones / iPads / iPods and Android, we next see us also optimising for MeeGo.
In practice there will be a new Mobile Zone which will partner with a Web Zone. These will share the same User-base / Community (User Profile) and Store (Store Profile), both of which will be extended with mobile components.
We’re expecting the development of the mobile platform to be very dynamic and there may be significant changes of direction during the roll-out as we take on board all the feedback from each roll-out. Expect public Alpha and Beta versions during the autumn / fall.
Targeting
Affino now has five active member targeting dimensions: interests (topics), network (friends / contacts), location, triggers (i.e. user behaviour), security (membership / partner), as well as all the passive targeting of related content, ’people who bought x bought y’, trending products / content / members etc.
We feel that this is fairly comprehensive in its breadth, but there is a great deal we will be doing on the depth, i.e. more trigger events, improved awards, and more localisation enhancements / database integration. We are very open-minded about this area and expect it to evolve consistently over the coming months.
More Engaging Communities
We will be doing significant upgrades on the public profiles. The first stage will be to completely revamp the Main tab on each member’s profile. Instead of being independent spaces where users post media, status updates and comments, we’ll be consolidating it into a single feed so that users can chose with a click to post a simple update or upload an image or an embedded YouTube video.
The feed will also include member’s recent blog posts and latest articles. It will also be possible to comment on each item. It means we should see many more conversations happening within the community.
Game Mechanics - we will be introducing game mechanics to Affino for the first time. These will be points and badge based and can be used both for fun and for more serious customer motivation / targeting purposes. Depending on projects, we may even take this one step further and tie it directly into payment / cash values / rewards.
Media Hub
Affino is already something of a media hub since it can handle many forms of image, video and audio content. The incoming media feeds, in particular YouTube feeds mean that it functions very well for aggregating media content and creating topical media pages.
The next stage will see the integration with a lot more 3rd parties, but more significantly we will be turning Affino into a video distribution hub. It means that if you upload a video clip with the associated meta data, Affino will automatically distribute it to the leading video portals including YouTube and Metacafe.
We will also be integrating directly into 3rd party video online production and encoding solutions. It means you can upload a video and have it transcoded / video thumbnails created. This will be essential for the shift to HTML 5 video which has now become a nightmare of codec support requirements: H.264, Ogg Theora and WebM.
We will be developing HTML5 based MP3 and video players, but this technology is still very rough around the edges. The clear priority will be to support WebKit, i.e. iPhone / iPad / iPod, but there are clear limits on what we will be able to do here in the near term.
Rounding out Affino’s eCommerce Capabilities
We have a lot of plans to further round out Affino’s ecommerce capabilities and to improve the back-end management interfaces. We’ve started on what is going to be a major ongoing effort over the coming months with the eCommerce 3.3 project, but that is just the start.
We’ll be developing many more of the traditional ecommerce management functions such as stock management; supplier chain management; and direct integration with couriers. There are a number of areas we can evolve Affino on the ecommerce side, and it will all depend on customer priorities.
Priorities
As always, priorities will evolve so the end result of the coming month will be somewhat different from that outlined above, but many of the projects mentioned will have been started and completed.
We will continue to roll out new Affino releases every two months or so, so be prepared to embrace all the new enhancements coming your way and to make the most of them.
Let me know if you feel strongly about particular projects, or if you feel there are other aspects we should be looking into. Hopefully you’ll be as excited about what’s coming as we are
Commerce Guys Sponsoring Ubercamp 2.0
Commerce Guys helps bring Ubercamp 2.0 to life at Drupalcamp Colorado 2009.
Ubercamp 2.0This summer, Ubercamp will bring the Ubercommunity together in Denver through a joint venture with Drupalcamp Colorado on June 27-28. The DCC organizers were kind enough to extend the offer of a joint event, and plans quickly came together to make Ubercamp 2.0 a reality.
Commerce Guys is happy to be a part of supporting the event as a Platinum Sponsor, but we're even happier to have the opportunity to take part in the event itself! As a Drupal company focusing on Ubercart site building and module development, we're always eager for opportunities to promote the Ubercart project and stay connected with the people behind the usernames.
Our plans for the weekend include brainstorming and code sprints with our fellow Ubercart developers, presenting sessions explaining various store setup tasks using Ubercart, and getting our groove on with some Dance Dance Revolution. We'll be sticking around all day the Monday after the event to get some extra work and grub in before flying home that evening.
If you're keen on joining us at Drupalcamp Colorado for Ubercamp 2.0, you can register for the event today and view or propose sessions for the weekend. The more Ubercart sessions the merrier! Hope to see you there.
Ubercamp 2.0This summer, Ubercamp will bring the Ubercommunity together in Denver through a joint venture with Drupalcamp Colorado on June 27-28. The DCC organizers were kind enough to extend the offer of a joint event, and plans quickly came together to make Ubercamp 2.0 a reality.
Commerce Guys is happy to be a part of supporting the event as a Platinum Sponsor, but we're even happier to have the opportunity to take part in the event itself! As a Drupal company focusing on Ubercart site building and module development, we're always eager for opportunities to promote the Ubercart project and stay connected with the people behind the usernames.
Our plans for the weekend include brainstorming and code sprints with our fellow Ubercart developers, presenting sessions explaining various store setup tasks using Ubercart, and getting our groove on with some Dance Dance Revolution. We'll be sticking around all day the Monday after the event to get some extra work and grub in before flying home that evening.
If you're keen on joining us at Drupalcamp Colorado for Ubercamp 2.0, you can register for the event today and view or propose sessions for the weekend. The more Ubercart sessions the merrier! Hope to see you there.
From DrupalCamp Colorado to the Drupal Commerce Sprint
Energized by DrupalCamp CO, we're diving in deep with Drupal Commerce.
We had a great time last weekend in Denver for DrupalCamp Colorado 2010. Many thanks to the organizers, sponsors, presenters, and attendees who made the camp a success and a very worthwhile learning event. There's a lot of great Drupal talent in the area, and we particularly enjoyed sessions on security, Drupal 7, and scalability by Greg Knaddison, Randy Fay (and others), and Nate Haug respectively.
After trips to the mountains and (for Damien) flying across 8 timezones, a few of the Guys still had the energy to join in with presentations. Kris Vanderwater came with us to present his Contextual Administration module and pinch hit in a Panels session, Damien joined a session on baffling Drupal bugs, and Ryan presented a session covering general tips for e-commerce on Drupal and another covering all things Drupal Commerce (slides available on SlideShare).
Getting more people psyched about Drupal Commerce was great preparation for this week's Drupal Commerce Sprint in Jackson, MI. The sprint began June 29 and continues to July 2. Work so far has involved a full code and UI audit with Damien Tournoud and Bojhan Somers, issues preparation for the week's development, more UI design, Google Summer of Code project review, and actual development targeting the checkout process and payment. We're excited by the ground covered thus far and look forward to really knocking out some issues tomorrow and especially Friday as we're joined by a couple other sprinters. Join us in the issue queue through the short link http://bit.ly/dcsprint3.
This is also quite likely the first ever Drupal code sprint to involve development in the day and work on a farm in the evening. We've been enjoying some fun here in rural Michigan with cookouts, post hole digging, and tractor driving around Mike's farm. Not a bad way to stretch muscles and relax brains after a day's work planning and developing. Word on the street is Bojhan might leave here a driver!
We had a great time last weekend in Denver for DrupalCamp Colorado 2010. Many thanks to the organizers, sponsors, presenters, and attendees who made the camp a success and a very worthwhile learning event. There's a lot of great Drupal talent in the area, and we particularly enjoyed sessions on security, Drupal 7, and scalability by Greg Knaddison, Randy Fay (and others), and Nate Haug respectively.
After trips to the mountains and (for Damien) flying across 8 timezones, a few of the Guys still had the energy to join in with presentations. Kris Vanderwater came with us to present his Contextual Administration module and pinch hit in a Panels session, Damien joined a session on baffling Drupal bugs, and Ryan presented a session covering general tips for e-commerce on Drupal and another covering all things Drupal Commerce (slides available on SlideShare).
Getting more people psyched about Drupal Commerce was great preparation for this week's Drupal Commerce Sprint in Jackson, MI. The sprint began June 29 and continues to July 2. Work so far has involved a full code and UI audit with Damien Tournoud and Bojhan Somers, issues preparation for the week's development, more UI design, Google Summer of Code project review, and actual development targeting the checkout process and payment. We're excited by the ground covered thus far and look forward to really knocking out some issues tomorrow and especially Friday as we're joined by a couple other sprinters. Join us in the issue queue through the short link http://bit.ly/dcsprint3.
This is also quite likely the first ever Drupal code sprint to involve development in the day and work on a farm in the evening. We've been enjoying some fun here in rural Michigan with cookouts, post hole digging, and tractor driving around Mike's farm. Not a bad way to stretch muscles and relax brains after a day's work planning and developing. Word on the street is Bojhan might leave here a driver!
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