Search Marketing Courses

Google has released a video describing a new (beta) feature on Google Maps for mobile called My Location. My location helps you determine where you are on a map even if you do not have GPS and without having to type in your location on your mobile phone keyboard.

Most web-enabled mobile phones (such as Java, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, or Nokia/Symbian devices) should be able to use My Location. 

This short video explains how My Location works, offers a real world example of how it may be utilized and addresses any privacy concerns that you might have.

Google Maps for Mobile - My Location (Beta) (02:26)

By now, most of us have heard that StumbleUpon can be a great source of traffic. This is true both in terms of the quantity of traffic as well as the quality of traffic that StumbleUpon sends.

You may have also read some good guides on how to get started with StumbleUpon, how to write for it, as well as tips on how to get the most out of StumbleUpon. And let’s not forget Darren’s great article on how to advertise with StumbleUpon.

In short, there is no shortage of quality articles written about how to best use StumbleUpon (and at the end of this article I’ll list a few more).

But as you may have gathered by now, Search Marketing Courses specializes in Video Tutorials - and fortunately, we have a video or two which will teach you a great deal about this amazing little tool bar (as you will presently see).

An Introduction to Stumbleupon

First things first, let’s get properly introduced to the StumbleUpon Toolbar.  And who better to make the introductions than Garrett Camp, the founder and "chief architect" of StumbleUpon.  As Garrett tells John Scoble in this interview, StumbleUpon is easy (and fun) to use: :

An Interview with Garrett Camp (03:48)

Now that we’ve properly met, let’s get better acquainted. We’ll let another Garrett (this one from Tech-bites) help us to get to know the StumbleUpon Toolbar a bit better:

A Deeper Look at StumbleUpon (07:10)

Stumbleupon Tips & Tricks

Below are a couple of useful tips for getting the most out of this powerful little toolbar (for more tips check out the links in this article)

Our first tip comes from Chris at SearchAnyway.com who offers us a helpful suggestion for what types of articles we should market with StumbleUpon:

StumbleUpon has ReRun Potential (01:09)

Our next video shows us how to operate the most important StumbleUpon features from our keyboard.

Short Cut Keys for Stumbleupon (02:12)

Stumbleupon Video

In addition to stumbling upon "random" content on the web, Stumbleupon also let’s you stumble upon online videos as Stumbleupon founder Garrett Camp told Beet.tv in this short little video:

Further Stumbleupon resources:

Well, that’s it for our StumbleUpon video tutorials. There is still, however, much to learn about StumbleUpon (particularly how to use this tool to market your website or blog). Below are a select group of articles that along with the links mentioned above can help to teach you the ins-and-outs of Stumbleupon. This is not an exhaustive list, but rather is made up of what I believe to be the best online resources available on how to use Stumbleupon.

• A Quick Traffic Driving Tip with Stumbleupon
• Stumbleupon Optimization Leveraging Photo Stumbles for More Web Traffic
• Increasing Your Stumbleupon Audience
• Stumbleupon Add-ons
• Stumbleupon Scripts from Greasemonkey
• A Comprehensive Guide to Stumbleupon How to Build Massive Traffic to Your Website and Monetize It
• A Definitive Stumbleupon Guide Driving Traffic to Websites
• Claim Your Stumbleupon Blog through Technorati (not sure about this one, but it’s a clever idea)

Sunday Thoughts at Search Marketing Courses

Earlier today I published my first Fun with Sunday post. Along the same lines, I thought it’d be worthwhile watching some of the more serious and meaningful videos from the Internet Marketing World. I call this series Sunday Thoughts. True to its name this series will present insightful videos about imporatnt topics and issues.

The first video is a lecture by Michael Oren that he gave at Google’s New York City offices on Febuary 5, 2008. Mr. Oren has just written a book called ‘Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present’ which "attempts explore and document America’s historical relationship with the Middle East from the 18th century up until the increasing complex present day.

Michael Oren is a renowned scholar on the Middle East whose previous books have received much acclaim including "Six Days of War" which won the Los Angeles Times Book Award and also made the New York Times bestseller list. In addition to his many historical books he is also known for his fiction.

Authors@Google: Michael Oren (57:07)

Want to learn more? Check out Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present at Amazon.com.

Fun on Sunday at Search Marketing Courses

For most people in the world Sunday is a day off (for me it’s actually the first day of the work week, but that’s another story). So I thought it’d be nice if I featured some videos with an interesting, non-work related twist on Sunday’s (we can all get serious again come Monday).

As such I’d like to introduce the Fun on Sunday series. Fun on Sunday’s videos will feature enjoyable, entertaining videos with an eye towards showing the lighter side of the Internet Marketing world. And who better to start with than some cute videos from Google featuring their Doodle 4 Google contest.

What, might you ask is a Google Doodle? Well, we’ll let Google’s Dennis Hwang "explain" in this neat little video:

Time Lapse Video of Google Doodle Creation (01:35)

Pretty impressive - I can’t even do that with a paper and pen, let alone on a computer!

Want to see some of the finished products? Here’s a short demonstration:

Google Doodles Animation - Short Version (00:32)

And here is a long demonstration:

Google Doodles Animation - Long Version (07:25)

And to end up this Fun with Sunday, here’s a cute little video about the Australian Doodle 4 Google competition

Doodle 4 Google My Australia summary (04:48)

So how about it? Do you want to Doodle 4 Google? Then check out the Doodle 4 Google home page and see if your school qualifies.

What do you get when you combine a social butterfly with a bookworm?

Del.ico.us.

Okay, I won’t quit my day job - but seriously folks, social bookmarking in general and delicious in particular is something that you want to know about.

Why?

Let’s let Lee LeFever of Common Craft answer that question:

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

And while we are at it, we should also let Garrett from Tech-Bite get his two cents worth in:

Tech-bite’s Intro to Del.icio.us

Note: When I signed up for Delicious I was asked if I wanted to install the Delicious Firefox Extension, which does not include the sidebar or toolbar mentioned in Garrett’s video. I later on installed the Delicious Bookmarks Firefox Add-on which does include the forementioned sidebar and toolbar. In other words, don’t worry if your default settings of del.icio.us don’t look like they do in the Tech-bite video.

Okay, now that you’ve got the basics down, let’s start to look at some of the more powerful networking features of Del.icio.us. We’ll let Liz B. Davis guide us on this tour with two very nice videos on how to best use Del.icio.us.

Her first video is also of the intro to Del.icio.us variety, but at the end she shows us how to use del.icio.us to discover what other people find valuable on the web. This is one of the powerful social elements of tools like Del.icio.us which enable us to learn from other peoples research. Let’s see how it works:

Getting Started with Delicious

Liz’s next video takes things a step further by showing us how we can build up our own social network of Delicious friends. This, in my mind, is a video that everyone should watch as it can be an extremely powerful marketing and search feature if used properly:

Networking with Delicious

By now you should have a good idea of what Delicious is and how to use it. But Delicious is not the only game in town - there are literally hundreds of Social Bookmarking sites that have popped up over the last few years - each with their own unique way of doing things. Hopefully we’ll be able to cover some of those other sites in future video tutorials.

Until then, why not get started and take a bite out of Del.icio.us?

Let’s start by saying that Google Reader is a great RSS Reader - it’s easy-to-use and works well. Even better, if you install Google Gears you can actually read all of your feeds offline. In short, with Google Reader you get the best of both worlds — a great online RSS reader with off line capabilities.

Let’s take a closer look at Google Reader. First we’ll take a look at Tech-Bite’s video introduction to Google Reader:

An Introduction to Google Reader

Looks pretty good, right? Then why not start using Google Reader? And while it’s fairly easy to start using Google Reader, just in case you need some help we’ll let Liz B. Davis show you how to get started with Google Reader:

Getting Started with Google RSS Reader

Okay - now that you have a basic understanding of how to use Google Reader and you’ve set up your account, let’s learn how to get the most out of Google Reader. To start with, we’ll look at another video from Liz Davis on how to manage your RSS feeds in Google Reader:

How to Manage Your RSS Feeds in Google Reader

Next, we’ll watch a musical demonstration of how to use some of Google Reader’s keyboard shortcuts by Lifehacker:

Using Keyboard Shortcuts in Google Reader

Was that a bit too quick for you? No problem, Google provides a full list of keyboard shortcuts on its website.

And finally, as we mentioned above you can also download all of your feeds to your computer - you can then read your feeds pretty much anywhere, as this musical video by Google demonstrates:

Google Reader on the Go with Google Gears

And Google Gears is incredibly easy to use as this boring (but helpful) video shows:

Using Google Gears with Google Reader

So there you have it - Google Reader in a nutshell. All you need to do now is sign-up and start using it.

The easiest, quickest and by far the most entertaining way to learn about RSS is to watch this short 3 minute video by Lee LeFever from Common Craft. It’s called RSS in Plain English and trust me - you’ll be glad you watched it (even if you already know what RSS is):

RSS in Plain English

Next, just to make sure that you’ve got the concept of RSS feeds covered, I’d check out this well done video by Richard Ziade of Sketch.Basement.org. In this video Richard clearly describe what RSS is and also shows us how to use it vis-a-vis Internet Explorer 7.0. Richard makes neat little videos by drawing them onto his PC Tablet computer — check it out and see what I mean:

RSS for the Masses

You can learn more about Internet Explorer 7.0 by clicking here or you can simply get it now.

There are other means of collecting and accessing your RSS feeds besides Internet Explorer 7.0 as this (semi) funny little video by SunProjector shows you:

RSS Unleashed

Or, if you are the more musical type, you may enjoy this very short video (this guy seems to get very passionate about signing up to a new feed):

Firefox 2 RSS Demo

Note: With both the Firefox Browser you can easily subscribe to RSS feeds vis-a-vis your favorite feed reader (online or off) in addition to subscribing within Firefox itself:

Pretty neat, eh? So what are you waiting for? .

Now, for those of you who prefer the written word over the moving screen, this abridged (and slightly updated) tutorial by Brain Clark of Copyblogger fame is just what you are looking for:

What the Heck is RSS?

RSS is a simply an Internet technology standard that allows busy people to receive updates to web-based content of interest.

You might have figured that much out by now. But basically, that’s the essence of an RSS feed – you subscribe and then receive new content automatically in your feed reader.

If you actually want to know how RSS works, click here.

What the heck is a feed reader?

You may already be using a form of feed reader, and not even realize it. If you use personalized home page services like My Yahoo or My MSN, you’ve got RSS capabilities built in. That’s how syndicated content like news, weather and stock quotes appears on your personal page. You can also add content from any blog or other site that uses RSS to provide updates.

Other web-based tools are primarily dedicated to feed reading only. One of the most popular web-based feed readers at this point is Bloglines, and it’s also free and easy to get started with.

For more info on getting started with Bloglines, read Bloglines (and aggregators in general) from Carson McComas of WorkHappy.net.

If you use the Firefox browser, you can also receive RSS feeds from your tool bar by using the Live Bookmarks function. Internet Explorer 7.0 has a similar feature.

Finally, there are desktop-based feed readers. These function somewhat like an email program for feeds. Examples include Newsgator and Feed Demon.

If it sounds complicated, it’s really not.

Sounds good. So how do I subscribe to a Feed?

First of all, look for the subscription or feed options (some bloggers make this difficult for some odd reason). You might see a variety of buttons (amusingly called chicklets).

If the site you want to subscribe to uses FeedBurner to aid in the subscription process (like Search Marketing Courses and many other popular sites), you’ll likely see the standard RSS icon, which takes you to a page that will give you an array of the most popular feed readers so you can select yours, and you’ll go from there. This is the new standard RSS icon:

Sometimes there will be a chicklet for your particular reader right on the blog that will take you to the appropriate subscription page. Some of the more popular RSS Feed readers are:

Finally, you may also see little orange buttons that say XML or RSS. Often these chicklets will take you to a page that looks like code gibberish. In this case, you simply cut and paste the page URL from your browser window and manually paste it into your feed reader subscription box.

Hopefully this last method will soon disappear, never to be seen again.

In summary: RSS solves BIG problems.

So there you have it… RSS is being adopted at a phenomenal rate, because it’s a good thing for everyone.

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Note: Microsoft recently introduced Windows Live Mail, a program similar to Outlook Express, which allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds.