We have all been pretty busy here at Morpheus Media over the last few weeks and months.  While getting to know new clients and brining new members on to the team is often an enjoyable experience, it can also be exhausting.  So Sunday night several members of the Morpheus family made our way over a few blocks west to Caroline’s.

The headliner Sunday was Joel McHale of Entertainment Televisions “Talk Soup” and he definitely delivered.  While the entire lineup got the job done, it seems like Joel has a special spot in the heart of some of the ladies here at Morpheus.  I have to admit though, I had more fun than I thought I would and was impressed by all the performers.

So I just wanted to take a moment to thank Rebecca Matt for putting the whole evening together.  Ms. Matt was able to get over twenty colleagues to amass together on a Sunday night in Times Square in July.  This my friends is no easy feat.  I would also like to thank our executive committee for sponsoring the event and keeping Morpheus a great place to work.  As we continue to grow as a company it is wonderful to know that we are still able to keep the feeling of friends and family.  Because in the end, who would you rather share a laugh with?

Many of the fashion and luxury markets of today are very hesitant to dip their toes in the water with social networking.  Before they hesitate again, they may want to view this new Comscore study which suggests that frequent users of social networking are also visiting and engaging in commerce on luxury and fashion sites more frequently than average internet users.  The numbers are quite amazing.  This article by fashion-fox.com claims that “95% of social networkers visited luxury and fashion retail sites in August”.

Read the full article with Comscore metrics >>

No, I’m not talking about the feeling you get when you install Office 2008 for Mac and realize the new excel is worse than it was in the 90’s and you can no longer get any work done.  I’m talking about a new FREE (yes FREE) application I’ve discovered called Anxiety.  If you are overloaded and inundated with tasks in iCal, and need a way to keep that list in front of you at all times so you don’t miss a beat, and really just need to work through a detailed checklist to get through your day, then this is the app for you.

If you operate on a split screen (like me, laptop on one side, monitor on other), it’s a bit more convenient.  Anxiety provides a small partially transparent window on your screen, that stays on top at all times.  You can display any calendar you’d like.  So if you have tasks on multiple calendars, you can flip between the different calendars with ease.  Once you check off a task, it turns green, blinks and then softly disappears (actually displacing your anxiety with a nice finishing touch).  Explaining this app doesn’t fully do it justice, so I invite you all to give it a try on your own.  I’m personally addicted, and my anxiety is now at a controllable level… sigh.

Like a majority of you I too rushed to download the new Firefox 3 browser. I really didn’t care for the whole world record thing Mozilla was trying to achieve, I just really like the Firefox browser and its customizing options.

Before the official release I had tried a few of their Beta platforms, I think Betas 2 and 3. I didn’t use them too often because many of my add-ons weren’t yet compatible with them so I just reverted back to the latest 2.0 build. After installing version 3.0 yesterday I noticed that it ported my entire tool bar set and plug-ins from the previous versions. I thought this was a nice touch being that I really didn’t want to go through and re-download all of them again from the Mozilla add-on site. Thankfully this time all the add-ons that I use were ready for build 3.0.

One problem of note was that one of my heavily frequented pages www.msn.com would crash the browser when I tried to view it. After trolling the discussion boards I got the impression that a certain
plug-in was the culprit but I wasn’t too sure exactly which one it was. After some trial and error of turning one off at a time a reloading I caught the little bugger red handed. Microsoft’s Silverlight plug-in apparently isn’t compatible yet with Firefox 3. I don’t think this is a really big deal as not too many websites are utilizing MS’s Silverlight tech, a competitor to Flash.

So, if you find that your new browsing sessions with Firefox 3 are abruptly ended with a crash and burn, check that maybe you have the Silverlight plug-in installed and disable it.

Well, today is the day that Mozilla drops Firefox 3 on the world.  I have to admit I am a little excited.  Having switched from a pc to a Mac just about a year ago, I quickly become a MacHead.  I now not only use the machines at work, I have invited them into my home.

I don’t believe there is  better compliment to Macs than Firefox, and I am not only referring to the SEO work we do here.  Sure Firebug is fun and provides a utility, but Firefox’s multiple tab organization and ease of use allows for even the most novice of users to effectively navigate the web.  The Industry Standard has a nice piece covering the details today.

Enough of a sales pitch though, since I still get charged full price at the Apple Store downtown.  Mozilla is looking at breaking a record on number of downloads in a day.  The fun and games start today at 1pm (est).  Love to hear your feed back once you make the jump.

I just came across a sneak-peek of the new Firefox interface for mobile on TechCrunch. And I have to say I’m pretty impressed. I am not sure how close to complete the project really is, but so far so good.

Firefox Mobile Concept Video from Aza Raskin on Vimeo

Either way I am excited about the new browser that may finally appear next week. Once this new edition makes its way to my desktop (which will be very quickly) I will be kicking the tires on it and reporting back.

Until then, love to here your projections as to the viability of the new mobile interface.

What sits next to your TV these days? The cable/DVR box, DVD player, Xbox/PS3, or

maybe even an Apple TV? Well, it looks like there are too many “boxes” taking up your TV stand space and I ha ve to say Panasonic is coming out with a solution that might help your situation. Panasonic’s new Plasma TV series, TH-PZ850U, features their latest technology called, Viera Cast, which is an interface that includes a live access to YouTube and Picasa as well as widgets such as stock ticker (courtesy of Bloomberg) and a weather widget (provided by The Weather Channel).

For the YouTube feature, the user can actually search by keyword, sort videos by popularity, or access your own list of “favorites.” According to Panasonic, although the entire collection of YouTube videos are available through Viera Cast, it may take a day or two to view the new videos.  Secondly, this TV can access Google’s photo sharing site, Picasa and view digital photos stored at your Picasa account directly on the TV screen.  At this time, Panasonic did not confirm any additional features or partners on Viera Cast but the main menu interface does show “coming soon” sections for additional cool features!

The concept and the idea of Panasonic’s Viera Cast mirrors the idea of Apple TV but keep in mind that this is all within the TV!  The fact that this TV doesn’t need a PC but directly connects to Internet with an Ethernet jack, it is simply convenient and user-friendly.  Although, there are few things that compare to Apple TV, such as a hard-drive where you can store your own music or movies, I still believe Panasonic took a huge step to incorporate such technology in a TV.  This is only the beginning of the exciting new adventure that is Viera Cast. We’ll see whether this technology will blast off and start a new trend in  TV business, OR just a small bump and a failure…

After attending the ESM (Executing Social Media) conference in mid May, my brain started working on overdrive. Flowers seemed to give off a sweeter smell, the sun shines stronger, and everything tastes a little better. Meeting and discussing things with PR Gurus and Social Media “Top Dogs” was an excellent opportunity for me to gain knowledge. For some reason everyone at this event thought I was 18 years old, which definitely gave me an advantage to say the least.

Many questions came up at the conference, but one was recurring; “What tool should I use to track my clients in the Social Space?” As usual the same answers were coming up as I have heard so many times before. Google Blog Search, Google Alerts, Technorati, Blog Pulse, etc. These are extremely important tools however I wanted to learn about programs like, Radian6 which is a buzz tracking tool available for purchase. I am always interested in new ways to track buzz.

A few questions that came from the crowd were really important ones; “How do I track new social platforms?”, “How do I produce metrics?”, “How can I prevent poor brand reputation?” Now we got to the good stuff. Using Summize Sentiment, Summize, Ask.com’s Blog Search, as well as some other hot new tools are great ways to track progress of your clients in the social space. There is yet to be a fully functional tool outside of Page Manager to track your clients Facebook metrics, as well as many restrictions on doing so. Friend Feed, was not voted on as being helpful as of yet, but still a really cool tool to see what large groups of social networks are doing as a whole.

While I was at the conference, Trackur was released by Andy Beal. It has been released with a two week free trial that is fluff free. This tool searches images, blogs, articles, and video all at once. It also has the power to search Twitter statuses which is so important to us and our clients being the buzzword of the year.

It can be expensive depending on the rate you need it. The pricing ranges from $18 to $197 per month depending on the amount of keywords you need tracked. It comes from somebody as trusted as Andy Beal, so there is no going wrong. I have seen him speak at previous conferences and his intelligence should be rewarded. Beal admits; there is no big office and he operating Trackur from his home. Additionally, he is definitely readily available for questions and comments on the tool.

After trying the tool out for two weeks, I find the tool extremely useful and important. This tool might be outdated in a few months by the next tool but in the meantime it is great for brand management, news alerts, competition analysis, and blog research. The only noted downside is the lack of a noise filter. Trackur will return lots of noise surrounding your keywords, while Google Alerts can filter out garbage. However, the amazing upsides to this tool that goes beyond all other tools are described well in the Trackur FAQ:

* Trackur can cover data sources outside of Google’s Index;
* Trackur has a more sophisticated management, web-based interface (Google Alerts just uses email;)
* Trackur allows you to store a history of alerts, whereas for Google you have to keep holding onto emails; and
* Trackur shows you a larger list of sources that mention your keywords - Google Alerts only shows you up to five items that appear in a 24-hour period.

Over the span of just two days at Executing Social Media, Los Angeles 2008, I learned how a group of 50 people usually communicate with millions and how they do it. There was a variety of influencers present at this conference. There were people working for media agencies, in-house social media gurus, and people looking to understand what it means for their product. In this kind of space, it isn’t uncommon to sit in a group of hundreds of chairs watching talking heads shout things at you that you’ve heard a million times at every conference.

In a session titled; “An Executive Survey of Social Media Tools & Resources for PR, Customer Service, and Marketing.“ by Brian Solis, we talked about Social Media tools and the right ways to use them. There are many social media outlets on the web but it is not necessary or always correct to be using them and many of them could be wasting your time. In the case of anything dangerous; it is wise to consult with a professional prior to engaging in social media activity.

Brian brought up some amazing points in this session:
• Companies on Twitter should be using it to monitor and communicate with their clients.
• It is important to approach people as people, individually and personally while conducting outreach in social spaces.
• Using Social Media tools to search for brands is much more helpful than searching on search engines.
• Always consider the long term. The sky is the limit for how brands reputation online can be damaged or improved in the long term of social media success or failure. The content spread around the internet will never disappear.

It was only a few months ago that Radiohead released In Rainbows, their seventh album. The album was available for digital download at a price chosen by their fans. This innovative approach has since opened a new door for musicians eager to share their music. On April 29th Coldplay took Radiohead’s idea and made it their own by offering a free digital download of “Violet Hills,” the first single off of their highly anticipated fourth album, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends. Hitwise recorded that U.S. visits to www.coldplay.com increased by 1800% since the bands new single was available free online in comparing April 27th data to April 29th data. Not only did traffic surge, but the site also quickly crashed. On that day their site ranked #1 among the Bands and Artists category, whereas two days prior to this the website ranked at #305. Hitwise data for the UK revealed that Coldplay exceeded Radiohead’s success by generating a daily market share of 19.87% in the Bands and Artists category on April 29th.

Perhaps this triumph for Coldplay can be attributed partially to their new website which aside from providing the free download also includes numerous other promotions. The site is hosting a competition to win free tickets to concerts in New York, London, and Barcelona. Fans can also embed a widget promoting the concert and Coldplay updates on their MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, and even their own sites. Another part of the site features graphics containing album artwork and videos of the band which are slowly “unlocked,” or made visible to the visitor as the concert dates approach. Hence, fans keep coming back. In addition to this content, there is also a unique band timeline that highlights a memory from each year since the bands conception. This timeline is composed of concert video, early show posters, and hand written notes from band members. The lack of a traditional discography or bio section illustrates that this is a band with a solid following that needs no introduction.

The presence of this loyal fan base could be responsible for the high level of traffic to the site and further demonstrates why free digital music distribution may only be a successful business model for already established musicians. Regardless, Coldplay should be credited with taking what Radiohead started as an alternative strategy to another level. Their long awaited return to their fans comes not only with what sounds like another amazing album, but with an innovative marketing approach that targets the band’s audience where they come to find their music first…on the internet.