Ben Blogs

Picking domains for a new website has always been my least favorite part of the whole web building process.

Not that I don’t think its important. I think its VERY important.

That is why I am usually not satisfied until my gut tells me it is. I know my vocabulary ain’t that big and I am almost always certain that a better word could be used.

Some internet marketing website domains are easier because it could be keyword matched. Or if you aren’t relying on organic traffic then pretty much anything will do.

For the past few days I have been cracking my head, trying to think of a domain name. A brand which I want to build and grow. Unfortunately I am a big sucker for umbrella branding. I always wanted to be able to use the same name across multiple products or services. Just like Absolut,Tune, Virgin, Mac. Practically most of the big brands do this.

I guess once your brand reaches a certain level of quality, it makes sense to do.

So after being fed up and frustrated, I figured that by this day in age, there must be some service out there that can help me. At least something that won’t cost be an arm and a leg.

Lo and behold, I came across this

The service looks interesting. This is what they are offering.

Looking for a cool name, domain or slogan but can’t think of one yourself? You’ll love PickyDomains.com.

• Our service is 100% risk-free. That is, you pay only if you like our work.
• Unlike naming/branding agencies that charge up to $120.000, our price is $50 per domain/$75 per slogan.
• You’ll receive hundreds of great suggestions.
• We understand your confidentiality concerns, and your order can be set up in a way that there will be no mention that your domain, name or slogan has been authored by our contributors.

$50 to finally solve my headache?!

I think I’ll give it a shot. Will update to see if I got any gems!

Times are indeed changing.

With the Internet slowly becoming an integral part of our lives, I have always wonder what would it look like if an entire country losses its connection.

A few days ago, this became a reality in Egypt.

Due to the uprising and unrest in Egypt, the government proceeded to execute a nationwide SMS and Internet blackout in hopes of preventing the protesters from leveraging on social media to galvanize on the streets.

Mashable has a quick recap of the story in Egypt so far:

We’ve been closely watching the social media aspects of this revolution since it began, and in case you missed our coverage, here’s a recap:

Twitter Declares, “The Tweets Must Flow”

BlackBerry Service Restored in Cairo? [UPDATED]

Visualizing Egypt’s Internet Blackout [GRAPHIC]

Facebook & Twitter Both Blocked in Egypt

Leaders React to Communication Blackout at World Economic Forum in Davos [VIDEO]

How Users in Egypt Are Bypassing Twitter & Facebook Blocks

Internet Reportedly Down in Syria

The Twitterverse Responds to Protests in Egypt [STATS]

Twitter Blocked in Egypt As Protests Turn Violent

YouTube, Flickr Show Escalating Violence in Egyptian Protests

Internet Access & SMS Blocked in Egypt as Protests Escalate

It’s amazing to see someone as young as this 8 year old girl offer her views on this whole debacle.

Mashable posted a link to today for its complete review of the movie “The Social Network”

I don’t know about you guys but I am extremely excited to watch this movie. I decided not to read the review as I hate spoilers (anyone that knows me know that).

I especially hate shit like “The guy died” but then saying that you were joking.  Because then I would know he didn’t die. Or did he?

I’ve also learnt from previous movies not to over hype myself to think that the movie’s going to be great.

The last one that actually “blew my mind” was Inception. Prior to watching the movie I had no idea what was it about, who acted in it or watched/read anything about it. It just slipped under my radar as I usually keep myself up to date on movies. So basically I entered with a clean slate. No expectations.

So here I am again, anticipating that The Social Network is going to the talk of the town once it hits our shores. (When is it going air in Malaysia??)

There are approximately 7million Facebook users in Malaysia alone. I wonder what the turnout would be.

Kids can finally explain to their parents, uncles, aunties, grandpa, grandmas question

Q: “Huh? What is Facebook?”

A: Go watch the movie!

If you guys have not seen the trailer yet, check it out below

But whats more interesting are these hilarious parodies for other online juggernauts. Haha enjoy!

Twitter

Youtube

Ebay

Last night, I chanced upon a meeting with the owner of Carlos Mexican Canteena and his friends.

Though I was only there to meet one of their mutual friend, they started talking about business and investing to which they had me hanging on to their every word.

They started off with some friendly banter on the subject of investing in the new frozen yogurt franchise. Calculating cost, ROI, etc.

Then the owner posed a question. “If you could have a 10% investment to own any franchise of your choice out there, what would it be?”

He goes on to explain a particular famous quote by Warren Buffet

“In business, I look for economic castles protected by
unbreachable ‘moats’.”
-Warren Buffett

What it basically means is that, when building a business (castle) you want to make sure you have as much competitive edge (moat) over your competitors so that it will be hard for them to overtake you.

Take for example  Southwest Airlines or Zappos. Their company culture is so unique deeply ingrained in every employee, that no one could copy it, even though everyone kind of knew how it was done.

If your competitors know your secret and yet still can’t copy it, that’s a structural advantage. That’s a moat

This got me thinking about branding.

Businesses are a dime a dozen in order to truly set yourself apart, you need to have your our unique branding…a moat.

If you look at brands like Starbucks, Coke, Apple, you can see that they have build huge moats around their castle. There is no doubt that there are other competitors can build/make better products than theirs but when purchasing is that what we truly want or remember?

In Malaysia, Nuffnang was the first blog advertising platform to emerge.

If one were to string together the best talent for a new ad platform, Nuffnang’s competitive edge over everyone would seem like an uphill task as they have managed to build such a strong moat.

This suddenly brings me back to two articles that I read with regards to social media.

The first is about a Dominos Manager in Chicago who actively uses social media to engage with his customers. For one particular complaint, he even went as far to record a personal apology on video.

If this happened to me in Malaysia, I think I would be speechless.

On a similar note, some restaurants have been using Twitter to fix customers complaints and to listen to their needs.

That’s the beauty of social media these days. It gives an opportunity to business to connect to their customers on a much personal level. To build brand around excellent customer service. And ultimately to widen the moat day by day.

What are some other examples you can think of with regards to businesses in Malaysia?

I was on my bed last night reading an article from Mashable and I learnt a new word.

Bacn

At first I just glanced past it as I thought it was some mumbo jumbo jargon these tech sites use. But being my curious self, I decided to check it out.

Turns out Bacn is the cousin of Spam! (email)

Wikepedia defines it as:

“Bacn (pronounced “bacon”) is email which has been subscribed to and is therefore not unsolicited, but is often not read by the recipient for a long period of time, if at all. Bacn has been described as “email you want but not right now”

We all know what Spam is and now I finally have a word to explain all those unread emails in my account. (Currently at 9k+)

These include Facebook notifications, newsletters, Twitter messages, invitations, updates, payment receipts, etc. There are not unsolicited emails (spam) per-se but truth be told, I can’t be bothered to open all these mails every time.

So this was what Gmail Priority Inbox was aiming to solve eh?

I have enabled Priority Inbox but at the moment I get more Bacn than I do get any personal emails on this account. So I can judge its usefulness.

Way back when Gmail first rolled out, I remember that their tagline was something along the lines of

“Never delete emails again”

All this years I’ve kinda stayed true to that.

But I don’t know what got the better of me this morning. I deleted close to 1k emails.

And it felt good!

I am still weary of “Deleter’s Remorse” so I’ve kept them in the trash

How are you handling your Bacn?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Gmail’s Priority Inbox Solves The Bacn Problem (makeuseof.com)
• Bacn (schott.blogs.nytimes.com)