Mobatalk developer Michael Bailey was the man behind ‘MyChingo’ - a neat little audio comment / message recorder. I remember trying that out last year and being impressed with the quality of the audio it recorded.

‘MyChingo’ used whatever microphone you had on-board your Mac or PC (webcam, plugin, built-in) to record and store audio messages on the MyChingo server. What was especially nice was the widget you could put on your blog to let your visitors leave you messages.

What went wrong? I’m not sure - we didn’t really ever get into using it properly possibly because as fast as we’d found it, Michael put a price tag on it.

Now, there’s Mobatalk. I gave it a quick go and was impressed by how easy it was to record a video clip and get it out as a tweet. And I was also impressed with the quality of the video, too. Go there and click the ‘alpha testing underway’ link and try it out. I had a problem with the Java (the record button didn’t show up in Firefox on Mac) but I switched to Safari and it worked fine there.

Mobatalk is one of those little applications that has great potential - and the link up with Twitter makes good sense. All I can say is that I hope Michael keeps it free.

MobaTalk Multimedia Messaging | Video

“My friend does this blog http://whateverblog.blogspot.com and is proud to be number 25 in most popular HR blogs” someone emailed today “I was wondering if you take a look, and if it was possible boost him up the league with your wizardry?”

I took a look at his blog.  Page Rank of 5, not bad.  First thing I noticed was the title structure of his Blogger posts - long blog name first, title last.  Somewhere I read that the further into a title the keywords were, the less effective they’d be.

His post titles are fairly ambiguous so far as Google is concerned being mainly written for human readers.  I chose one reasonably ‘competitive, business-like’  keyphrase from one of his post titles - “engaging the workforce” and searched for it in Google.

His post turned up on page 13, position 9 in Google.  Not good at all.

I then wrote a post on this blog using the same keyphrase.  Four hours later, that post is on the first page of Google.

How would I help this chap?  I’d set him up a Wordpress blog, proper domain name, proper hosting (as opposed to Blogger-hosted), work out his keywords and teach him how to use them in pages and posts.

P13 v P1 for the same term - and his blog has a higher page rank (5 v this one’s 4) to start with.  It’s quite a persuasive argument.

Why? Because they create a bit of distance between people and the issues they find hard to talk about.

And because often pictures can capture and communicate how people feel quicker than words can.

Delta7 has been using pictures to help major UK organisations work through change over the last 10 years.

Delta7’s ‘Visual Dialogue’ process captures the organisation’s story and uses the picture to engage staff at all levels in a discussion about where they’ve come from, how things are and where they’re going. It’s a great way to develop a shared and more meaningful strategy because it invites everyone to co-create the future and innovate their way to it.

I’m pleased to have supported Julian at Delta7 in developing his ideas over the last 12 years - and even more pleased now to be working directly with them in London on a number of major projects.

A post appeared on the A1 forum a while back, telling the story of an artist who had tied up a street hound in a gallery and was allowing it to starve to death - in the name of art.

Outraged animal lovers and right-minded people everywhere rushed to sign the petition. More than a few expressed the desire to do violence to the artist himself.

Several pages into the thread (the longest I can remember on that forum) one or two people began to question the story. Eventually, it became clear it was a hoax - just one of many designed to create chain-reactions in the online community.

It is claimed that the artist created the hoax to show how uncritical we have become in the online world. And we have. Not a single teenager I’ve ever spoken to about Facebook has expressed a concern - or even an interest - in the political, commercial, ethical or social forces at work behind the software they willingly give their data to.

When we lose our critical faculties, we are at the mercy of anyone aiming to get us to react.  Which is why the internet generally - and sites like Facebook in particular  -  is the perfect environment for advertising.

It’s simple - but not easy to do.

Interestingly, the same three things that add up to good online reputation monitoring.

We specialise in looking at why it’s so hard for organisations to listen.  Why individuals struggle to understand the experience of the customer and what gets in the way of responding positively and respectfully.

Many organisations try to make customer service ridiculously complex.  Our take is that it’s simple, but hard.

Not in my experience.  Not in my brothers’ experience. Not, it seems, in an awful lot of other peoples’ experience.

We’ve all had our fill of listening to call center operatives struggling through scripts in a second language.  And losing money because this company seems to bank on people going away in despair rather than stick to their guns and demand satisfaction.

As customers, we expect a) to be listened to and b) our experience to be understood and c) our needs to be responded to.

There.  That’s the ‘Dripping Tap’ manifesto.

Listen.  Understand.  Respond.

Simple isn’t it?

How do you know how Google sees the keywords in your website content?

Register for Adsense and put some Adsense ads on a hidden page in your site - and watch what Google serves up.

If you design blogs and the ads are for blog design services, then you’ll know that Google thinks your copy is about blogging. Success. Your keywords accurately describe your business activity to Google.

If the ads are about something completely different, you’ll know that your copy isn’t communicating to Google successfully that you’re in blogging and you need to look at writing it differently or re-thinking your keywords.

Thanks to Adam Stone of Rokk Media in Exeter for this tip (and others) - and he points out the value of blogs, too Adam’s a nice guy - the Jeremy Clarkson of web design, don’t you think? (Close your eyes and listen…).

Meantime, we’ll follow Adam’s advice and submit this site to ‘Feedshark’ (hence the link below..)

Feed Shark

We’ve always said that blogging critically about a company is usually a deliberate act of punishment for the crime of not listening. I make no apologies for this post being exactly that. I hope it’s picked up by PayPal’s online reputation management people and I hope it’s picked up by people considering whether or not to use PayPal.

It’s not online defamation, its transparency. It’s real, lived experience - customer feedback - that the company won’t listen to.

Email from a family member to EBay dispute department regarding a possible scam on Ebay.

“John,

Thank you for your reply.

What concerns me so much is PayPal is unsafe to use, and impossible to contact. If your bank ignored six emails, two calls wouldn’t you be a little alarmed?

Before the iPhone issue my account was £4 in credit. Now, apparently, after their ill-advised transaction I am £5 in debt - simply outrageous. They not only helped a third party to scam me, they charged ME for the privilege.

I’ve sent SIX emails - how many do you think I should have to send to get a reply? I can’t work on this ‘full-time’, I have to earn a living. I’ve spent a fortune on the telephone, no-one senior was available, the indian call centre operative couldn’t understand me, and the promised ‘call-back’ never came.

These guys are out of control, are going to ruin your business and an unsuitable partner for eBay. I now fully understand the ‘No PayPal’ I see so often.

Please help me to bring them to justice - they are operating beyond any kind of decent business practice. The worst company I have ever dealt with.”

My response to family member:

“I’m currently paying a $5 a month subscription because Pay Pal connected two of my accounts with a supplier to the same record number and I can’t delete it as a result.

I too gave up after weeks of phone calls trying to explain the nuances of the problem to someone in what was, for them, a second language. No response, no solution. In fact, the more I called / emailed, the further I got from a solution until, like you, I just gave up.

Totally unacceptable, totally unaccountable.

Is PayPal any good? Not according to these customers.  Family member says eBay seem sympathetic which, I suppose, is good news - considering they own PayPal

This is another example of what happened to family member, btw (see first story in the thread).

I’ve had to gag myself tonight.

I’ve seen yet another ‘local online directory’ that’s started up, peddling its wares, inviting people to sign up and advertise their businesses.

The site is a mess. There’s almost nobody signed up on it, and it currently offers no Google visibility to the few who are.

I’m not going to name names, but its one of many. They come in all flavours: online business directories, local ‘portals’, community magazines. They all have one thing in common: they want you to advertise in them, promising increased traffic and Google visibility in return. Some of the big, well-known ones deliver (with varying degrees of success). A lot of smaller, local ones don’t

One such business in this region I’ve heard explicitly offering people increased Google visibility as part of its so called ‘benefits’. I’ve tested its claims backwards and forwards and found that it offers its top paying members NONE.

Another such venture quotes statistics to impress prospects how many people use the internet to buy things - and, of course, to imply that their product offers increased Google visibility. Guess what? It doesn’t.

I’m stopping short of naming these businesses because it’s tantamount to declaring war - and I’m still not sure why it bothers me so much that they do what they do.

In part, it’s because they depend on ignorance to sell their services. But I think the thing that really gets me is that nobody dares announce that the emperor, yet again, is wearing no clothes.

I suspect that if I named those businesses and challenged them, nobody would thank me for doing it. The businesses themselves certainly wouldn’t, nor would the people wasting their money on them. Why?  Because they want to believe in an easy fix.

Look out for his 3 times weekly video podcast- now serving!

And be sure to look out for my Darth Vader impression (even I haven’t seen it yet!)