Charles Lau

I agree with Michael Arrington about his post. Google is monopolising ad deals in its own because of the demand and supply. If Google were to increase the prices, buyers will just stop buying. And the sales will just go down. Advertisers will only buy for what they want to get from the ads.

I believe that Google-Yahoo ad deal is going to be beneficial for all advertisers as the inventory expands into a larger market.

Fred Wilson is giving his Web 2.0 Keynote.

There are many people out there who are still living in the web 1.0 world. Web 1.0 is dominating and it mainly consists of one-way communication from the websites to their visitors. I just can’t stand those people who are still living in the Web 1.0 world, preaching about web 2.0. The world is coming into social media. Asian consumers are having fun with it. Are the Asian companies catching up with the consumers soon? I hope so.

1. You do not have a blog.

This is the very obvious thing that you are still living in the Web 1.0 world. Although you have the choice of not having your own blog, it seems to me that those people who are not having their own blogs are probably from these groups of people:

• People who are born in 1979 and earlier (What’s wrong with Gen X versus Gen Y or even Gen Z?)
• People who seldom use Internet as part of their lives (Completely understood)
• People who think that blogs are not true because it’s only an opinion. (To me, all information out there which includes our “official” books are only authors’ point of views…)
• People who are introvert. (Even introverts can appear to be extroverts in the Internet world…)

2. You still bother to type in “www” when we tell you “charleslau.com”

Who on earth actually invented the idea that we have to type in “www” in all our domain names? Right from the beginning, “www” is already a convention which is not compulsory technically. And we have to put in “www” just in case our visitors forgot about it and thought our websites are not online. Even it’s so, we have to inform Google about our preferred domain name. Google needs to know whether “www.charleslau.com” is the same as “charleslau.com” or not. Anyway, technically I have forwarded all “charleslau.com” requests to “www.charleslau.com” for this convenience’s sake.

3. When you detect this piece of content is from a blog, you disregard its value.

I just don’t understand why many people (Singaporean companies especially) are not valuing this piece of beautiful content expansion to the Internet contribution. Many old-fashioned companies think that a blog will make them look not professional. What’s wrong with a blog when you can engage with your visitors? Oops, only Web 2.0 websites are able to engage with their visitors. So if you don’t have a blog, what other ways you are adopting? A one-way traffic of information flow?

4. You are wondering whether you should participate in Facebook as a company.

In this context, I am talking about facebook, myspace, friendster, etc. The online media companies might have been able to convince the old-fashioned companies that they should spend money for online advertisement. The old-fashioned companies are educated the expensive way. Why didn’t the old-fashioned companies go into starting their own groups/communities? Starting their own group, having fun with your community.

5. Afraid of giving the visitors the “voice” to broadcast their disagreements.

No doubt about this. It is pretty scary to give your customers/visitors the ability to tell the world about your products’ weaknesses via your own website or even your own communities. This is not easy to handle from the point of the old-fashioned companies. But from the new generation companies, it gives them the kind of exposure they need. It also gives them more feedback to better their products again and again. For people who are always focusing too much about the complaints, they may just be defeated by the complaints. For those who embrace it, they will be able to take the feedback, thank the person, and tell everybody about the new and better features.

6. You are still checking emails, surfing the internet for information, and shut down the computer.

For those people who commented that you are not having a social life out there while staying at home spending time with Internet more than anything else, these are the ones who are still living in Web 1.0 world. You could be communicating with so many people over the Internet that it can be more than what you can do outside. I am not commenting that social media life is better or worse than social life. What I mean is that social life is just as important and we should all be going for the best of both worlds. You could be meeting a new friend from the social media. And you could be meeting this friend in your social life. Web 2.0 websites are just the tools to get ourselves engaged.

7. You can live without Internet.

Seriously speaking, the internet has provided the kind of reliance as much as what a mobile phone can do for us. The internet is able to increase efficiency in our life. We don’t have to queue to get something when the queue can be automated in the computer at the comfort of our home while we can do something else at the same time. As for our mobile phones, it basically makes us more accessible to our contacts who need to communicate with us instantly. And now, mobile phones have doubled up to access the Internet easily for a number of different functions such as live camera, RSS readings, check emails, and surf internet.

8. You have heard about Web 2.0. You don’t know what it is all about.

So, what’s web 2.0? You may be asking. What’s RSS? What’s facebook? What’s twitter? What’s friendfeed? What’s with all these things that can help us in? What’s so good about them? You may even say that you don’t need to access them at all. But let me tell you that these people who say that they are not going to use, are going to use it anyway. For those people who are born in 1979 and earlier will use them because of the trend and demand. So, they may even use it and not knowing it’s Web 2.0. Anyway, the browsers have not changed much, except for the new Google Chrome. So, I believe many people are still puzzled by such term.

It has been history. Flash files are now searchable. Everybody has been worrying that their flash contents are not accessible for the search results. It is not true. I am not sure if Google did announce it publicly. But I google about it and found some useful articles about it.

So now, search engine optimization has moved on into a whole new level. What name shall I call it? How about calling it as “Flash Files Search Optimization” (FFSO). FFSO is now possible. And everybody who knows about it are finding ways to optimize their flash files for search engines. It is also a skill!

I am speculating as I do a simple test on the various files which are searchable. Adobe has announced about what to do about it, Adobe states that it is searchable throughout.

But I realize that if you are doing a very big flash with many animations and interactions, you may face problem indexing your flash files properly.

Indexing is just one issue. How about optimising it for search rankings? It will be a totally new class for all of us who are having fun learning more about search engine optimization.

Whatever it is, so long as we are doing our normal work just like how most of the people did in their website, we should be safe. That’s because search engines are working in the direction of the websites, and not the other way round. Speculating about search engine optimization is actually redundant. Learning how most of the best practiced websites do, is a good form of search engine optimization.

But… the best practiced websites are always not from the extremely big companies, but are from the individuals or small companies.

I am seriously having a very fulfilling time working on my e-marketing work. So much so that my girlfriend may sometimes felt neglected. I just love to work on it and to make things happen.

Talking to the vendors, getting things to work, having a great time getting things right… These are the daily chores I have to work on to get things moving. I am seriously having a good time.

I may not be the perfect person to get everything done correctly. But I will think of as many ways as possible to solve a problem. When there is a question, there is an answer.

Sometimes, I just don’t like to see things not going smoothly, but that is where the question comes for us to think of a solution.

I like working with people who can move with me together to improve things.

And I am glad that this little hobby of mine – Charles Lau dot Com – is at least something along the e-marketing learning curve I can take and explore. I thank God that I can still work on this hobby.

It is true now. I have been facing a lot of problems with this operating system and yet there are so many big companies out there shouting out loud that Windows Vista is their preferred operating system. When I saw this article from MaximumPC talking about Microsoft admitting what went wrong with their Windows Vista, my doubts were proven to be true.

I worked for a while for a system integration company previously. We always advise our customers not to use Windows Vista. And when they bought a new laptop with Windows Vista, we would help them to downgrade to Windows XP. I remember seeing my sister’s laptop facing problem with the graphic drivers. The whole system looks so unstable.

While it is so, big companies have been shouting out loud about Windows Vista as their preferred operating system. They shout because it is an invisible advertisement? Or they really love Windows Vista?

Most of the time, big companies don’t really know what they are really doing. That’s because the people behind are just marketing personnels who may not be as well-versed in the area of IT. They just have to take in whatever they have been given, and produce some marketing gimmicks over it.

Moreover, they can’t take back their words so easily because it has been broadcast to the world with many people who bought it. If they take back, many customers will also want to take back their money (asking for refund).

It has not been like this for the first time. I may not know what happen to Windows ME, but that is also another operating system which is so unstable. I don’t see it lasting for long.

I think the best operating systems Microsoft has produced so far are Windows 98 SE and Windows XP for the consumers…